“Apostolic Continuity of the Church and Apostolic Succession” Concluding Reflections to the Centro Pro Unione Symposium William Henn, O.F.M
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Louvain Studies 21 (1996) 183-199 “Apostolic Continuity of the Church and Apostolic Succession” Concluding Reflections to the Centro Pro Unione Symposium William Henn, O.F.M. Cap. My aim in the following reflections is not so much to add new data to what was presented in the five excellent papers prepared for the sym- posium held on November 23-24, 1995, at the Centro Pro Unione in Rome on the “Apostolic Continuity of the Church and Apostolic Succession.” Rather, my own reflections will be limited to the following points, which I have attempted to derive directly from the material pre- sented in those papers: I. the importance of the symposium; II. a prin- cipal area of convergence; and III. specific issues which could lead to yet greater convergence. I. Significance of the Theme of the Symposium The report published in 1990 by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches about the responses of the various Christian communities to the Lima document on “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry,” includes the following observation: For many on both sides of the issue the question of episcopal suc- cession remains the most difficult problem for further dialogue on ministry. Behind this issue lie significant ecclesiological questions. It can, therefore, only be tackled in the framework of a broader, more intensified discussion on ecclesiology …1 The Centro Pro Unione symposium has been a valuable contribution to this discussion, focusing on the ecclesiological theme of the apostolic 1. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry 1982-1990: Report on the Process and Responses, Faith and Order Paper, 149 (Geneva: WCC, 1990) 128. 184 WILLIAM HENN continuity of the Church and, within that context, on the precise topic of apostolic succession. Because one of the defining parameters of the symposium was the Porvoo Common Statement of the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran Churches and the Anglican Churches of Great Britain and Ire- land, the papers of the symposium have also given quite precise atten- tion to the topic of episcopacy. When speaking of the difficulty and complexity of this issue, as does the Report on BEM cited above, one should not overlook the progress which has already been made in reflection about apostolicity. Perhaps an example could illustrate this. Almost thirty years ago, the Roman Catholic theologian Yves Congar wrote an essay entitled “Apos- tolicity of Ministry and Apostolicity of Doctrine,” in which, taking as his point of departure some passages by Luther, Melanchthon and other reformers, he attempted to show that the two dimensions of apostolic- ity entailed in this distinction are rather closely intertwined in patristic and later scholastic writings.2 This could have been considered a bit avant-garde at the time, in that Congar suggested that one could not simply rely on succession in ministry as the sufficient criterion for ensuring apostolicity.3 He provided various witnesses, at one point quot- ing Pope Sixtus III (432-440) to the effect that one cannot truly be con- sidered a successor to the apostles if one does not follow them in the faith which they handed on. Thus, correct faith was often seen as much as a criterion by which bishops were acknowledged to be “in apostolic succession” as was their ordination in a line of ministerial succession. The importance of apostolicity in faith in underscored by the fact that some of those who had fallen into error during the doctrinal debates of the early centuries were in fact ordained bishops of ancient “apostolic” churches. One recalls John Henry Newman's comment that, during the great Arian controversy, “the episcopate, whose action was so prompt and concordant at Nicea … did not … play a good part in the troubles consequent upon the Council; and the laity did.”4 Neither Congar nor Newman made use of these observations to question the legitimacy or even, for them, the necessity of the episcopacy for the Church. But for 2. The full title of this work is “Apostolicité de ministère et apostolicité de doc- trine: Essai d'explication de la Réaction protestante et de la Tradition catholique.” First published in 1967, it was later included among the essays of Y. Congar, Ministères et communion ecclésiale, Théologie sans frontières, 23 (Paris: Cerf, 1971) 51-94. 3. This point also is made in various ways in the symposium papers of Dr. Tan- ner, Professor Tjørhom and Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon. 4. J. H. Newman, “The Orthodoxy of the Body of the Faithful during the Supremacy of Arianism,” in The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919) 445-468 at 445. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS TO THE SYMPOSIUM 185 them it seemed clear that an approach to apostolicity which isolated ministry from faith or faith from ministry could never be adequate. If one looks at the rather numerous ecumenical dialogues which have taken up the question of apostolicity during the last thirty years, one can trace a certain shift in the way in which the topic has been framed. Most of the dialogues prior to BEM tended to speak of apos- tolicity within the context of discussing ministry. Since then, there has been a substantial increase in dialogue precisely about ecclesiology and, within that context, about the nature of the whole Church as apostolic.5 This has tended to place the question in a much broader context, the ultimate fruits of which may not yet have come to light. If nothing else, it seems a general point of agreement among divided Christians that Christ's church is and must be apostolic and that its apostolicity needs to be understood in a way which takes into account many factors. II. A Major Convergence Concerning Apostolicity The Porvoo Common Statement accepts this broader vision of apos- tolicity, as does each of the conferences presented during the Centro Pro Unione symposium. Dr. Tanner reflected on the integral unity of the various factors favoring apostolicity as, to take only one example, in her discussion of the organic relation between the elements present in the Chicago/Lambeth Quadrilateral. This more global and integrated understanding appeared also in Professor Tjørhom's five general theses on apostolicity, as well as in his analysis of the Porvoo Common State- ment. Professor O'Collins developed biblical material which principally supported the presence and succession of leadership structures, but this was related and in service to the ongoing continuity of the community 5. A perusal of the indices of the various collections of ecumenical documents under the headings “apostolicity” or “apostle” will, in a general way, verify this observa- tion, although there are some exceptions, such as the relatively early document (1970) from a theological commission set up by the Joint Working Group of the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches which focused on the catholicity and apostolicity of the Church as a whole, and not simply on apostolicity of ministry. The report of this commission was published under the title “Study Document on ‘Catholicity and Apostolicity',” One in Christ 6 (1970) 452-483. Helpful syntheses of the overall ecumenical discussion of apostolicity can be found in F. A. Sullivan, “Apos- tolicity in Ecumenical Dialogue,” in his The Church We Believe In: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988) 185-209; and H. Schütte, “Apostoli- zität der Kirche – Gabe und Aufgabe,” in his Kirche im ökumenischen Verständnis: Kirche des dreieinigen Gottes (Paderborn/Frankfurt am Main: Bonifatius/Otto Lembeck, 1992) 115-123. 186 WILLIAM HENN as a whole. Metropolitan John gave a very direct and distinctive accent to this principle by arguing from patristic sources that apostolic succes- sion is fundamentally a succession of communities and that succession in episcopal ministry must be understood within this context. Finally, Professor Meyer's theological presentation from the perspective of the Reformation begins precisely with the more global understanding of continuity and proceeds to situate ministerial succession within that context. Here, then, is an important convergence among the symposium papers. It signals that theologians representing the Anglican, Lutheran, Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions would all reject the isolation of any one element of apostolic continuity – such as, for example, faith or ministry – as the sole means or criterion of such continuity. A first consequence of this would appear to be that the divided Christian com- munities already can and do consider each other to be to some degree “apostolic.” This recognition does not eliminate the need to explore the whole mosaic of factors which enter into apostolicity and to seek possi- ble consensus about what they are and how they relate to each other in maintaining the Church as apostolic.6 But this shift from identifying apostolicity in a very restricted way to the more realistic and dynamic view that apostolicity entails many elements and that various communi- ties may express these in various ways and degrees is one of great impor- tance, perhaps the most considerable achievement of ecumenical dia- logue about apostolicity so far. III. Specific Promising Themes In addition to this major convergence, a number of specific issues have been touched upon in the various conferences which can con- tribute to a real advance toward greater consensus about apostolic con- tinuity and apostolic succession. I will discuss below three such issues. 6. A recent ecumenical acknowledgment of the many factors involved in apos- tolicity as well as of the need to more deeply reflect on the way in which they work together is the second part of the “Report of Section II: Confessing the One Faith to God's Glory” of the Fifth World Conference of Faith and Order (Santiago de Com- postela, August 3-14, 1993).