The Anglican Position on Apostolic Continuity and Apostolic Succession in the Porvoo Common Statement Mary Tanner

Louvain Studies 21 (1996) 114-125

I. Anglican Tradition

The question of apostolic continuity and apostolic succession has been a concern of Anglicans since the time of the Reformation as Angli- cans have sought to understand their own identity often in discussions, not always irenic, with other traditions. Continuity was understood as multi-faceted: continuity in the faith grounded in the Scriptures; continuity with the Fathers and the Councils of the early Church; continuity in the worship and sacramental life of the Church; continuity in the ministry, ordered in the threefold pattern and continuity in the episcopate and in the collegial gatherings of the bishops – all of this expressed in the continuing life and witness of the faithful people in the parishes. Living in this continuity was what determined Anglican self-understanding rather than adherence to any confessional documents. There was discontinuity too: most obviously and sadly in the break with the papacy. Anglicans understood themselves to be part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church in a particular place, living in dynamic continuity with apostolic teaching, order mission. Within this broader and multi-faceted view of continuity there has always been a debate focused upon the continuity of the ordered ministry. In the face of Roman Catholic, Puritan and Reformed traditions writers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries addressed themselves to questions about the relation of the episcopal office to the apostolic office, the divine right of the episcopal office and continuity in ordination. The insistence on ordination by bishops, who themselves had been ordained in traditional fashion by other bishops, was a way of testifying that legitimate reception of authority – as distinct from seizure of it – presupposes both continuity in office and orderly transmission of office. THE ANGLICAN POSITION ON APOSTOLIC CONTINUITY 115

One theme that exercised the minds of Church of England leaders was the precise link between the Apostles and the first bishops. Hooker was more nuanced than others in the claims he made. At one time he argued that “after the Apostles were dead, the churches agreed amongst themselves … to make one presbyter chief in each city over against the rest.”1 In another place he writes: “the Apostles themselves left bishops invested with power above other priests.” He is confident that the Apostles did in one way or another have a hand in matters.2 The seventeenth century discovery of the works of Ignatius of Antioch led someone like John Pearson, Bishop of Chester 1673-86, to summarize things in this way: As the Father sent Christ, so Christ [sent] the Apostles, and the Apostles their successors … By this apostolic action of handing on [tradition], the entire power of ordination is resident in the bishops.3 Up until 1662 the debate was shaped largely in the attitude taken to foreign Reformed Churches. Anglicans demanded episcopal succession in the ordering of the Church at home. While commending it abroad, some nevertheless were inclined to recognize these churches as genuine churches with a real ministry which of necessity had introduced presbyterian polity, an attitude which was not extended to groups within England where no such necessity could be claimed. The elegant and generous letters of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester 1555- 1626, and John Cosin, Bishop of Durham 1660-1672, make fascinating reading today, especially in the light of the current Church of England discussions with the French Lutheran and Reformed Churches. In a letter in 1618 to Peter Du Moulin, Andrewes is anxious not to deny that a church could consist without episcopal succession: He is blind who does not see churches consisting without it; he is hard-hearted who denies them salvation … There may be some- thing absent in the exterior regiment, which is of divine right, and yet salvation is to be had … To prefer a better thing is not to condemn a thing. Nor is it to condemn your church if we recall it to another form, namely our own which better agrees with all antiquity.4

1. R. Norris, “Episcopacy,” in The Study of Anglicanism, eds. S. Sykes and J. Booty (London/Minneapolis: SPCK/Fortress Press, 1988) 296 ff. 2. Ibid., 303. 3. J. Pearson, Minor Theological Works, vol. II (Oxford: Parker, 1844) 73, 75. As quoted by Norris, “Episcopacy,” 303. 4. In reply to Peter Du Moulin's Second Letter 1618, L. Andrewes, Opuscula quaedam Posthumata, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (Oxford: Parker, 1852) 191. 116 MARY TANNER

A year later in replying to the same correspondent he writes: “You asked me whether your churches have sinned in the matter of divine authority. I did not say that. I said only that your churches lacked some- thing which is of divine authority.”5 He goes on to suggest that what is lacking can nevertheless be supplied now by God's grace. Some thirty years later the debate was continuing in equally fascinating letters between John Cosin and a Mr Cavel of Blois. Cosin writes of the “great presumption to depart from the example of the Apostles” but still can't bring himself to say factum non valet and pronounce them “utterly void” – “altogether null and invalid.” He points out that if any minister from France comes to receive a cure of souls in England (as indeed I have known some to have done) they were not, and are not, re-ordained. To do so would be to declare their former ordination void. This generous attitude of Cosin compares with France and Geneva's own attitudes in insisting on re-ordaining “papist priests.” I dare not take upon me to condemn, or determine a nullity of their own ordinations against them: though, in the interim, I take it to be utterly a fault among them, and a great presumption, deserving a great censure … 6 The Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland, Jeremy Taylor's view, however in 1642, was somewhat different. He was in no way persuaded by the argument of necessity. While it was not his place to condemn the action of the Reformed, he was clear that there were many archbishops, and cardinals, that joined in the Reformation who could have been employed.7 Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Winchester from 1689-99, came to the view that “there is as great reason to believe, the Apostolic Succession to be of Divine Institution as the Canon of Scripture …,” an idea which has re-surfaced in this century in the Lambeth Conference of 1930 and in ARCIC I's work. All of this illustrates the Anglican interest in episcopacy and its own adherence to historic episcopal succession. The views expressed are not identical: they illustrate differing and shifting reactions to the Reformed Churches. However, there is no doubt that for all these writers, for the Church of England, episcopacy and historic succession were fundamental for the life of the Church. It was the Act of Uniformity in

5. In reply to Peter Du Moulin's Third Letter 1619, L. Andrewes, Opuscula, 211. 6. J. Cosin, “Letter to Mr Cavel at Blois,” Id., The Works, vol. IV, Miscellaneous Works, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (Oxford: Parker, 1851) 400-407. 7. J. Taylor, “Of the Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy (1642),” in The Whole Works, ed. R. Heber (London: Longman, 1828), vol. VII, 138-143. THE ANGLICAN POSITION ON APOSTOLIC CONTINUITY 117

1662 that formally excluded clergy who had not been episcopally ordained from pastoral office in the Church of England. In the eighteenth century other events were to influence percep- tions of apostolic continuity. High Church clergy who refused the oath to William III began making claims for episcopacy, this time not over against the Reformed, but over against political power. Episcopacy is a divine gift and in the apostolic office of a bishop lay the Church's authority and identity – independent of Parliament. The succession of bishops was emphasized in the continuity with the Apostolic office. The Church's constitution is independent of that of civil society and only by maintaining that constitution – ordination by persons standing in succession to the Apostles – can the Church maintain its identity. The historic episcopate comes to be seen as one of the definitions of the Church, a tradition which in the nineteenth century was re-asserted by the Tractarians.8 The way was open for a debate between those who see the “historic episcopate” as belonging to the esse of the Church, and those who see it as a matter of bene esse or plene esse. This is a debate which still rumbles on, though as Bishop John Hind pointed out in a recent lecture, Anglicans have never expressed a common mind about this: all three views have been, and still are held within the Church of England and the Anglican Communion today.9 Whatever answer is given to this rather outdated form of the episcopal question, the Anglican position that the historic episcopate is a non-negotiable for the unity and continuity of the Church was set out in the classical Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral in 1888 which outlines the conditions for re-union with other churches and in doing so also makes a statement of Anglican self-understanding. The fourfold items of Holy Scriptures as containing all things necessary to salvation; the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed as a sufficient statement of the Christian faith; the two sacraments ordained by Christ, Baptism and the Lord's Supper and the Historic Episcopate locally adapted in the meth- ods of its administration. The strength of the Quadrilateral is that in setting out require- ments for unity it does not isolate one item from the others. The four items of the Quadrilateral are not separate, unconnected to one order. They are integrally bound together in what Stephen Sykes calls “parts of

8. J. H. Newman, Tracts for the Times (London: Rivington, 1833), no. 1, 3. 9. J. Hind, “The Porvoo Common Statement: Process and Contents and the Hopes of the Anglican Church,” in Leuenberg, Meissen and Porvoo, eds. W. Hüffmeier and C. J. Podmore, Leuenberger Texte, 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 1996) to be published. 118 MARY TANNER a single system of communication.” Anglicans would want to hold, as the Roman Catholic Response to Baptism, Eucharist & Ministry does, that they are not content merely to list and juxtapose such items “without showing sufficiently how they have their own function within the totality and how they are related among themselves.”10 To quote Jean Tillard on the items of the Quadrilateral: They are not a catalogue of items, the addition of which automati- cally creates the presence of the Church God wills … a kind of anatomical glue. They belong within an experienced koinonia in dis- cipleship, service, prayer, witness, and commitment to mission.11 These little vignettes of Anglican engagement with the question of the historic episcopate and apostolicity and succession are, on any reckoning, highly selective and inadequate. They will hardly satisfy rig- orous historians. However, they are sufficient to illustrate that Anglicans have always had a very particular concern for continuity and apostolicity and for the place and role of the historic episcopate. They have been influenced by the changing relations to state authority, by biblical and historical research, by the temperament and sensitivities of individual theologians, by the differing outlooks of evangelical, catholic, liberal and puritan Anglicans, and, not least of all, by relations with other churches. At best continuity has been seen within the totality of the life of the Church, bound by inter-related elements of continuity. All too often, however, historic episcopal succession has been lifted out of the context of the life of the Church and made the sole determinative ele- ment of continuity. Christopher Hill, in a shortly to be published essay, shows how, partly as a consequence of the publication of Apostolicae Curae, the ecumenical agenda for Anglicans became dominated by a very narrow concentration on orders and succession. He comments that Anglicans overemphasized episcopal succession in isolation as an “unconscious compensation for an Anglican esteem dented by Apostoli- cae Curae.”12 In their turn, Anglicans, in dialogue with non-episcopal churches, have found it difficult to commend the historic episcopate, without seeming to be clinging arrogantly to a narrow pipe-line view of

10. M. Thurian (ed.), Churches Respond to BEM: Official Responses to the “Bap- tism, Eucharist and Ministry” Text, vol. VI, Faith and Order Paper, 144 (Geneva: WCC, 1988) 32. 11. J. Tillard, “The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral in the Service of Commu- nion,” in Communion and Episcopacy, ed. J. Draper (Oxford: Rippon College Cuddes- don Publications, 1988) 23. 12. C. Hill, “Anglican Orders: An Ecumenical Context,” (1996) article to be published. THE ANGLICAN POSITION ON APOSTOLIC CONTINUITY 119 succession and in so doing denying the ministry of partners in the dialogue. This has been the rock on which many a scheme of unity has floundered. All of this forms the background for understanding the Anglican position on apostolic continuity and apostolic succession in the Porvoo Common Statement.13 To state it this way is not quite right. Before I go on I must rephrase what could be misleading in the title of this paper. It is not the Anglican position of apostolic continuity and apostolic succession that we must look for in the Porvoo Common Statement. It is rather a “fresh,” twentieth century statement on continuity and succession which Anglicans can recognize as a statement of the faith of the Church, the catholic faith. It is a statement which Anglicans can recognize as consonant with the faith that Anglicans have sought in their history to affirm. It is important to get hold of this distinction because in voting for Porvoo, Anglicans were voting for a greater visibility in Northern Europe of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, living in continuity with the faith of the Church through the ages.

II. The Porvoo Common Statement

The strength of the Porvoo treatment of apostolicity and succession is that, unlike so much Anglican and ecumenical discussions in the past, it treats apostolicity in an holistic way, refusing to wrest the apostolic ministry apart from the apostolic life of the whole people of God. It begins with a consideration of the apostolicity of the life of the whole Church, the Church whose vocation it is to play its part in the recon- ciliation of all things in Christ. Apostolicity means that the Church is sent by Jesus to be for the world, to participate in his mission and therefore in the mission of the One who sent Jesus, to participate in the mission of the Father and the Son through the dynamic of the Holy Spirit.14 Here Porvoo is making its own the words of an earlier Anglican- Lutheran international text, The Niagara Report.15 Porvoo is receiving the insights of this earlier ecumenical dialogue into a text which is now

13. The Porvoo Common Statement, CCU Occasional Paper, 3 (London: Council for Christan Unity of the General Synod of the Church of England, 1993). 14. Ibid., par. 37. 15. The Anglican-Lutheran International Continuation Committee, The Niagara Report of the Anglican-Lutheran Consultation on Episcope, Niagara Falls, September 1987 (London/Geneva: ACC/LWF, 1988). 120 MARY TANNER not simply registering convergence in words, but which is intending to change a relationship. Here is a new genre of text, one which moves us from theological convergence in words, to convergence in changed relations in the lives of the churches. Paragraph 37 of the Porvoo text emphasizes that the apostolicity of the Church is related to participation in the relational life of the Trinity and through this participation identification with the divine mission is established. Apostolicity in Porvoo is relational: the Church lives in relation to the divine persons in whose life it participates, it lives in relation to the Apostles, and it lives in an intricate network of social relations. The apostolic character of the Church is also dynamic. Founded on the Apostles who Jesus taught and sent, it is sent in mission through time, looking beyond history to eternity, to the eschaton. It experiences in its midst here and now, both the memory of the past and the foretaste of the future.16 This opening insistence of Porvoo on the apostolicity of the whole Church is fundamental to the logic of the document. It restores a proper balance to some recent ecumenical texts. Apostolic tradition in the Church, according to Porvoo, means continuity in the permanent char- acteristics of the Church of the Apostles that is: witness to the apostolic faith, proclamation and fresh interpretation of the Gospel, celebration of baptism and the eucharist, the transmission of ministerial responsibilities, communion in prayer, love, joy and suffering, service to the sick and needy, unity among the local churches and sharing the gifts which the Lord has given to each.17 The words this time are taken straight from Baptism, Eucharist and Min- istry for that text sums up well the characteristic elements of the Church's apostolicity. The description is familiar to Anglicans. It is very close indeed to the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral which describes both Anglican identity and unity and the identity and unity Anglicans seek to live with others. The Anglican formula holds together the interlocking elements of a total life of faith, sacraments and ministry as part of a single, apostolic system of communication. To borrow another analogy from Stephen Sykes, the Porvoo argument on apostolicity and succession proceeds like a series of Russian dolls. The apostolic community lives within the divine trinitarian life. Within the life of the apostolic community itself the apostolic ministry

16. The Porvoo Common Statement, par. 37. 17. Ibid., par. 36. THE ANGLICAN POSITION ON APOSTOLIC CONTINUITY 121 builds up and assembles the Church. The different tasks of the one ministry find expression in its structuring in the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons. And so the text moves inwards in the series of Russian dolls, to the ministry of oversight episkope. The two sections on the ministry of oversight which follow need to be taken together: one section describes the ministry of bishops. It is followed immediately by a section on the personal, collegial and communal exercise of oversight. In this way the oversight ministry itself is not seen in isolation but as essentially relational: a bishop's ministry is exercised in relation to his diocese, in relation to other bishops in collegiality and in relation to the community in synodal gatherings – communal gatherings. This emphasis on the personal, the collegial and the communal, the threefold dimension of episkope, is familiar to Anglican theology and Anglican experience, though like all Christian churches Anglicans strug- gle with how best to express the personal, collegial and communal forms of oversight. They hope, through ecumenical dialogue, to be helped to find a creative way of developing these structures of communion. Here it is worth drawing particular attention to two lines of the final paragraph of this Porvoo section: “The personal, collegial and communal dimensions of oversight find expression at the local, regional and universal levels of the Church's life.”18 In a quick reading of the text this section is easily passed over. It needs to be noted that this passage contains a reference to a personal ministry of oversight at the universal level. For Anglicans this dimension of apostolic life is not unfamiliar. Provinces have their presiding bishop or archbishop. And the developing role of the Archbishop of Canter- bury at a world level represents a personal focus of unity for the entire Anglican Communion. The passage implicitly looks forward to that conversation on a ministry of universal primacy which is asked for by the Holy Father in Ut Unum Sint.19 Ecumenical understanding of the place of universal primacy, serving apostolic continuity and apostolic succession, would be greatly advanced by a serious ecumenical and open exploration. The Holy Father is surely right to identify this as a crucial issue for the future ecumenical agenda. The Russian dolls have been opened. The argument has arrived at a critical point in the discussion: the exploration of the episcopal office in the service of apostolic succession. The text has emphasized that the

18. Ibid., par. 45. 19. John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, Papal Encyclical, May 25, 1995 printed in Ori- gins 25, no. 4 (1995-1996) 49-72. 122 MARY TANNER continuity of the ministry of oversight is to be understood within the continuity of the apostolic life and mission of the whole Church. Apos- tolic succession in the episcopal office is a visible and personal way of focusing the apostolicity of the whole Church. The concept of ‘sign' is fundamental to the Porvoo argument. “The whole Church is a sign of the Kingdom of God; the act of ordination is a sign of God's faithfulness to his Church … To ordain a bishop in historic succession (that is, in intended continuity from the apostles themselves) is also a sign.”20 It is a visible and personal way of focusing and signifying the apostolicity that belongs to the whole Church. The historic episcopal succession is not for Porvoo an optional extra – but neither is it a guarantee of the fidelity of a church to every aspect of the apostolic faith, life and mission. We must be honest, such a claim simply cannot be made in the face of history itself. Continuity in the episcopate signifies God's promise to the Church. At the same time it signifies the Church's intention to be faithful to its apostolic calling. It gives assurance to the faithful that the Church today intends both to do and to be what it has always intended to do and to be. The laying on of hands by bishops in succession is a sign – an effective sign – of that intention. It is worth pausing for a moment on the term “guarantee.” Porvoo is clear that the historic episcopal succession is not a “guarantee” of the fidelity of the Church to every aspect of the apostolic faith, life and mission. The 1994 Report of the Church of England's House of Bishops, Apostolicity & Succession, considered whether there is a difference between those who with Porvoo claim historic episcopal succession is neither an optional extra nor a guarantee and those who would, in some sense, wish to retain the use of the word guarantee, as does the Roman Catholic Church's response to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry.21 The English bishops concluded that in fact there is no fundamental difference. The Roman Catholic response, while using the word guarantee: does not claim that the indefectibility, infallibility and apostolicity of the Church are unquestionably assured merely by an historically demonstrable laying on of hands from the time of the apostles. It follows that the word ‘guarantee' should be understood in the context of a system of symbols and symbolic language. Symbols and symbolic language give and communicate meaning in complex and subtle ways. The historic episcopal succession is an expression first of Christ's faithfulness to the Church, second of the Church's

20. The Porvoo Common Statement, par. 50. 21. M. Thurian (ed.), Churches Respond to BEM, vol. VI, 33. THE ANGLICAN POSITION ON APOSTOLIC CONTINUITY 123

intention to remain faithful to the apostles' teaching and mission. It is a means both of upholding that intention and of giving the faithful the confident assurance that the Church lives in continuity with the Lord's apostles and in anticipation of a glory yet to be fully dis- closed.22 For Porvoo then continuity belongs to the apostolic life of the whole Church. Historic episcopal succession is not a guarantee of fidelity but neither is it an optional extra in the dynamic apostolic life. But Porvoo sees continuity is also manifested in the ordered succession in the historic episcopal sees of the Catholic Church. The stress on “bot- toms on seats” as well as hands on heads is well attested in the early Church. The Porvoo contention is that succession in the Church should, therefore, be seen as a rope of several strands of continuity. If one strand, such as that of the personal tactile succession is broken, another strand, such as the historic sees can hold it, even though the rope of succession may be weakened. This is because “being apostolic is a many-sided reality.” It was precisely at this point that this Anglican- Lutheran agreement was influenced by the Orthodox-Roman Catholic dialogue. The Valamo Statement, quoting the Munich Statement of 1982, relates apostolic continuity to the life of the local churches: Apostolic continuity is transmitted through local churches. It is a matter of succession of persons in the community, because the Una Sancta is a communion of local churches and not of isolated indi- viduals … apostolic succession … is a succession in a Church which witnesses to the apostolic faith, in communion with other churches, witnesses of the same apostolic faith. The ‘see' (cathedra) plays an important role in inserting the bishop into the heart of ecclesial apostolicity.23 This is precisely the same rich view of apostolicity and succession which Porvoo expounds when it refuses to wrest historic episcopal succession from its location within the life of the whole Church. It is this carefully set out agreement in faith in Porvoo, with the supporting strength of many bilateral ecumenical texts, that “frees” Anglicans to acknowledge “an authentic episcopal ministry in a church which has preserved continuity in the episcopal office by an occasional priestly/presbyterial ordination at the time of the Reformation.”24 At the

22. General Synod of the Church of England, Apostolicity and Succession, House of Bishops Occasional Paper, GS Misc. 432 (London: Church House Publication, 1994) par. 57. 23. “The Sacrament of Order in the Sacramental Structure of the Church” (Valamo, 1988), par. 45 and 46, see Origins 18, no. 18 (1988) 299f. 24. The Porvoo Common Statement, par. 52. 124 MARY TANNER same time a church which, like Denmark, has preserved continuity through such a succession is free to enter a relationship of mutual participation in episcopal ordinations with a church which has retained the historical episcopal succession, and to embrace this sign, without denying its past apostolic continuity. The use of the phrase “free to embrace” is not used in the sense of free to decide whether to embrace the sign or not. It is rather a strong use of the word “free.” As the text itself says, these churches should embrace the sign. The agreement liberates them and they can do no other. The new relationship of communion established by the Porvoo Declaration is based upon the intention of the churches to remain faithful in the past to the apostolic teaching and mission and also to sign that intention to be faithful together into the future in a single, recon- ciled episcopal ministry in the historic succession. While Porvoo refuses to make a negative judgement on the existing ministries of any of the participating churches, it at the same time maintains the requirement of historic episcopal succession as a requirement for the visible unity of the Church. What the Porvoo Common Statement says about apostolic continuity and apostolic succession is consonant with what Anglicans have sought to uphold since the sixteenth century. More than that, it is what Anglicans believe is consonant with the faith of the Church through the ages. The Porvoo statement on apostolicity and succession is a fresh common statement of the faith of the Church springing from a shared re-reading of Scripture and tradition, while at the same time taking account of the teaching and lived experience of both traditions. It is also consistent with what Anglicans have said in other bilateral dialogues: with Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Reformed partners. And, for the Church of England, it is consistent with unity conversations in Eng- land. As the House of Bishops said in its guidance on Porvoo to the General Synod: What we agree with Lutherans across the water cannot be different from what we seek to agree with churches in England … The House can only imagine entering into a relationship of visible unity with another church in England if that entailed a unity in faith, sacramental life, a single presbyteral ministry with a common episcopate in the historic succession and common structures: in short a single Church for the sake of strengthening mission and service to all.25

25. General Synod of the Church of England, A Report by the House of Bishops Report to the General Synod, GS 1156 (London: Church House Publications, 1995). THE ANGLICAN POSITION ON APOSTOLIC CONTINUITY 125

Porvoo comes from a regional Anglican and Lutheran dialogue. It establishes a communion of churches in Northern Europe. It is based upon what the two traditions believe to be the faith of the Church through the ages. It was formed not only from Anglican-Lutheran documents but from texts from Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Reformed bilateral dialogues. There is no ecumenical council in which to test the conclusions of Porvoo. Nevertheless, it could be asked whether, or in what way, the theology of The Porvoo Common Statement, and the dynamic of the Porvoo way, might serve as a model for a wider communion in Northern Europe – and beyond – so that together we might become a more effective and credible instrument of God's saving and reconciling purpose for the whole of humanity and creation?