Scottish Episcopal Institute Journal Volume 2.4 Winter 2018 ISSN 2399-8989 Foreword DAVID JASPER……….3 The Question of Episcopal Authority in the Scottish Episcopal Church DAVID JASPER……….4 A Question to Trouble Us? OLIVER O’DONOVAN……….11 A Bishops, Moderators and the Kirk: A Discussion to be Resumed? DAVID FERGUSSON……….18 The Biblical and Historical Foundations of Episcopacy NICHOLAS TAYLOR……….23 Episcopacy in the Reformation CHARLOTTE METHUEN…………….35 Scottish Bishops ALISTAIR MASON……….52 Where Does the Bishop Stand in the Church? Perspectives from that Other ‘English Church’ GREGORY K. CAMERON……….57 Bishops – Some Thoughts and Pathways MICHAEL JACKSON……….66 Episcopacy: An American Perspective JAMES F. TURRELL……….72 An Interview with the Bishop of Swaziland ELLINAH WAMUKOYA AND NICHOLAS TAYLOR……….85 The End of Bishops? FRANCIS BRIDGER……….95 Afterword DAVID JASPER……….101 DAVID M. BERTIE. The Heraldry of the Bishops of Scotland Reviewed by ALLAN MACLEAN….…..……..….102 SCOTTISH EPISCOPAL INSTITUTE JOURNAL 2 Enquiries Enquires to the Revd Dr Michael Hull Scottish Episcopal Institute 21 Grosvenor Crescent Edinburgh EH12 5EE Scotland–UK 0131 225 6357 [email protected] Disclaimer The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the authors in the Scottish Episcopal Institute Journal do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church or the Scottish Episcopal Institute. Copyright The author of each article published here owns his or her own words. The articles in the Scottish Episcopal Journal may be freely redistributed in other media and non-commercial publications as long as the article is not abridged, edited or altered in any way without the express consent of the author. A redistributed article may not be sold for profit or included in another medium or publication that is sold for profit without the express consent of the author. The articles in the Scottish Episcopal Journal may be included in commercial publication or other media only if prior consent for republication is received from the author. The author may request compensation for republication for commercial use. Revised Monday 17 December 2018 Foreword DAVID JASPER Convener of the Doctrine Committee of the Faith and Order Board of the Scottish Episcopal Church and Professor Emeritus of Theology and Literature (University of Glasgow) If there was a time to discuss bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church, it is now. Three out of the seven dioceses have recently elected new ones, and a fourth is about to do so. A new Primus is just over a year in office. And the experience of the procedures of securing the episcopal tradition have been anything but smooth. Everything suggests that the role of a bishop in a diocese, and the College of Bishops in the policy of the church, is a contested field of clashing expectations. The maintenance of seven dioceses with all their appurtenances lays a burden of increasingly heavy dimensions on a shrinking body. Without some serious attempt to take our bearings, the life of our new bishops promises to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short – and, of course, the life of the Scottish Episcopal Church with it. There are other, wider-ranging reasons to focus attention on this point. In the unfolding of the crisis of the Anglican Communion the role of bishops, and especially of primates, has achieved a sudden prominence, with models of episcopal authority drawn from the patristic era to justify a flurry of mutual excommunications. And far beyond the Anglican Communion, as well as within it, increasingly anxious questions about how juridical standards of institutional probity set by public law are reconcilable with the pastoral and teaching ministry that Christians claim that bishops exercise, take us back to certain stubborn problems of the middle ages. The essays collected here, for each of which only the author is responsible though some result from informal discussions among the authors, are offered to bishops, clergy and laity as an incentive to thought, prayer and discussion. And because, four centuries ago, bishops were something Scottish Christians bloodied one another’s noses about, they are accompanied by a courteous reflection offered by an ecumenical partner in the majority tradition in Scotland, as well as voices from other Provinces of the Communion. May they be a first word in taking bearings, not the last! The Question of Episcopal Authority in the Scottish Episcopal Church1 DAVID JASPER Convener of the Doctrine Committee of the Faith and Order Board of the Scottish Episcopal Church and Professor Emeritus of Theology and Literature (University of Glasgow) This brief paper will give particular attention to the nature of episcopacy in the contemporary Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) and, initially, with particular reference to its close geographical neighbour in the Anglican Communion, the Church of England. Historically the description of the SEC as ‘the English Church’ in Scotland is incorrect but has enough of the truth in it to be an awkward presence. In an essay describing the residencies of Queen Victoria in Balmoral in the early 1870s, Owen Chadwick remarks that while the Queen herself was committed to worship in the established Church of Scotland, many Of the English who came north refrained from attending the services of the Church of Scotland, or of the Free Church of Scotland, because they wanted an English form of service and knew that they would find it in the Episcopal Church of Scotland; and if they were instructed Anglicans, they knew that the Church of England was in communion with the Episcopal Church and that they might loyally receive the sacrament at its altars.2 But important though the nineteenth century and its revival of the Scottish Episcopal Church largely through the somewhat Romantic sensitivities of the Oxford Movement3 is, the real story underlying the drift of this essay on episcopacy must begin rather earlier. 1 Originally presented at a meeting of the Church and the Academy (https://www.churchandtheacademy.org) on Saturday 16 June 2018. 2 Owen Chadwick, ‘The Sacrament at Crathie, 1873’, in Scottish Christianity in the Modern World, ed. by Stewart J. Brown and George Newlands (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), p. 178. 3 See, Stewart J. Brown, ‘Scotland and the Oxford Movement’, in The Oxford Movement: Europe and the Wider World, 1830-1930, ed. by Stewart J. Brown SCOTTISH EPISCOPAL INSTITUTE JOURNAL 5 In his History of the Scottish Episcopal Church (1843), John Parker Lawson emphasizes from the beginning the absolute centrality of the episcopate in the history of the SEC. Everything derives from the bishop. The successions in the Episcopate are carefully narrated as of the utmost importance, for while the ordinations of Deacons and Presbyters are merely local and personal, the Church at large has a vital interest in the consecration of every bishop.4 Lawson begins his history with the pronouncement that ‘the Church in Scotland twice received the Episcopal Succession from the Church of England, first in 1610, and again in 1661.’5 In fact, of course, the Episcopal Church has its origins from an earlier date – 1582 – when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal authority and adopted Presbyterian government and a reformed theology. Through all the vicissitudes of the seventeenth century, the significant moment, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, was the final restoration of Presbyterianism in the established Church of Scotland, and the consequent placement of Episcopalians as Dissenters. In 1689 about sixty Episcopalian clergy were ‘rabbled’ out of their livings by Presbyterian mobs6, while loyalty to the Stewart dynasty in the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 brought about the near extinction of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, penal laws being rescinded only in 1792. The recovery of the SEC in the nineteenth century was largely under Tractarian influence, the Oxford Movement being naturally drawn to its preservation of spiritual independence and anti-Erastian Church principles. While he was still an Anglican, John Henry Newman wrote rhapsodically in Lyra Apostolica (1836) of ‘our brethren of the North…. Cast forth to the chill mountain air’. Indeed, the survival of Scottish episcopacy was an act of defiance against Presbyterian compromise on the historic orders of the threefold ministry. The question that this poses today is of the nature of this apostolic and catholic calling in Scotland, and thus the particular nature of the Scottish episcopate. To what is God calling the SEC in its particular ministry and mission? The Scottish bishop is elected in each diocese and, unlike the bishop in the Church of England, is not appointed by the monarch and Peter B. Nockles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 56-77. 4 John Parker Lawson, The History of the Scottish Episcopal Church (Gallie and Bayley, 1843), p. x. 5 Ibid. p. 1. 6 See, Stewart J. Brown, The National Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland, 1801-46 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 41. SCOTTISH EPISCOPAL INSTITUTE JOURNAL 6 as Head of the Church and through the Crown Appointments Commission. He or she therefore does not have any rightful participation in national government, unlike Anglican bishops in England, twenty-six of whom sit in the House of Lords. It is clear why the Tractarians found the Scottish bishops so important. Let us begin briefly with the matter of authority. Many years ago R. P. C. Hanson remarked that ‘authority for the Christian is a combination or harmony of several forms of authority, all fused in faith.’7 In the same essay Hanson asserts that ‘the authority of the church lies ultimately in the Word of God whom it obeys and whose witness it finds in the Bible.’8 The church’s authority is not its own but is of God and for the SEC we might add that this authority is rooted in Scripture and Sacrament.