The Historic Episcopate

Introduction

At some point in the year 2000, Ted Peters and I ran into each other on the internet. Ted is professor of theology at the Lutheran seminary of the Graduate Theological Union, and he was also head of my doctoral committee when I got my Ph.D. at the GTU in the 1980s. After a brief exchange, he asked me if I would be willing to write an article on the Historic Episcopate. He wanted to publish it in a journal of which he was the editor. I said I would be happy to do so. As far as I know, he published the article.

The Historic Episcopate is the idea that the earliest bishops of the Church were chosen by Christ's apostles, and that they in turn chose their successors, and they chose their successors in an unbroken line to this very day. Bishops in the Lutheran Church are not in this succession, while those in the Episcopal Church are. The Lutheran and Episcopal Church were planning a closer degree of unity, and one of the principle sticking points was that new Lutheran bishops be consecrated by Episcopal bishops so that their bishops would also be within the historic succession. There was some doubt as to whether this was really necessary or important. For that reason, Ted was interested in my writing an article.

The principle idea of my article is rather simple: the Historic Episcopate was one of the ways the early Church guaranteed that the their belief and practice was the faith handed down from the apostles. As measured by apostolic teaching, the early church was able to discirminate between true and false faith, between orthodoxy and heresy. If the Church today wants to preserve and honor the Historic Episcopate, then it must believe that there is such a thing as orthodoxy, that orthodoxy must be preserved against heresy, and that bishops have a major responsibility in this process. Needless to say, that is exactly the opposite of what many Episcopal bishops actually believe and do. The essay follows.

The Historic Episcopate -- An Episcopal View

Do Lutherans need the historic Episcopate? As an Episcopalian, I cannot answer that question for Lutherans. I can, however, affirm the historic Episcopate as originally conceived. Given that understanding, I would support the Lutheran document "Called to Common Mission."

Episcopal bishops are called to be pastors, to ordain, and to govern. They are also called to be "one with the apostles" and to "guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church." (Episcopal ordination service)

The need to guard the faith arose very early in the Church's history. Most significantly, the faith was undermined in the second century by the gnostics. They quoted Scripture, and to counter their teaching the Church appealed to the regula. The regula was the oral and protocreedal teaching of the apostles. With their deaths, it was passed it on to their successors the bishops. As heirs of the apostles, the early bishops could legitimately oppose heresy since they possessed the apostolic teaching. By contrast, the heretics could not claim the succession. Therefore, their teaching was not authoritative. In short, the Episcopate was charged with the task of safeguarding the ancient regula from generation to generation through the historic succession.

The regula was eventually formulated in the historic creeds. The internal order of these creeds is important. The Apostles and "Nicene" Creeds both place the second article on Jesus Christ prior to the third article on the Spirit and the Church. This is because the objective truth of revelation, Jesus Christ and the essential facts of his life, are prior to and create the Church. In recent centuries there has been a massive reversal of this order. There has been what theologians call a "turn to the self," the belief that the Church creates the truth of Christ so that theological statements are really descriptions of communal faith, ethical claims are expressions of community commitments rather than divine commands, and the gospels are creations of the early Church placing its insights upon the lips of Jesus. In this regard, one Episcopal bishop recently commented, "The Church wrote Scripture and the Church can certainly rewrite it."

The reversal of this order has produced what theologian James Smart calls the "divided mind of modern theology." In his view, North American theology has never addressed the division. Unless we do, we cannot make sense of the historic succession nor of the meaning of "Called to Common Mission." What, for example, is meant by "apostolicty" in the statement that the "ministry of pastoral oversight (episkope) ... is necessary to witness to and safeguard the unity and apostolicity of the Church?" Does it mean that bishops in our time are inspired to receive new truths from the risen Christ just as the Apostles received their truth from the earthly Christ in their time? There are Episcopal bishops who teach just that. Or does it mean that bishops receive and safeguard the one faith given to the Church by the apostles?

If it is the latter, hard work, study, prayer, and the willingness to oppose error are required. As Richard Hooker put it, the way to truth is "a thing painful," and its acquisition may well deny "advancement" in the church. In the thirty years I have been an Episcopalian, I have scarcely met an Episcopal bishop who knew whether or not Athanasius could stomach Schleiermacher's truncated christology, or whether Hooker's view of supernatural revelation would outlaw Macquarrie's concept of God as being, or whether Barth's christocentric hermeneutic of miraculous grace is closer to the classical pattern than Bultmann's existential one. Nor is it clear to me that our seminaries clarify these matters. From my perspective, a significant portion of the professors reflect the presuppositions of the academy rather than the historic faith. Once graduated, few future bishops have the time or inclination to compare theological modernity with the ancient tradition. Yet that is the very thing that must be done.

Nor are Episcopal bishops elected because of a public commitment to "orthodoxy." Can you imagine a prospective candidate to the Episcopate claiming to know the tradition and thereby having the nerve to suggest that certain bishops and scholars might be wrong? No, bishops are elected because they are pastoral, have effectively managed successful churches and programs, and can articulate the values of the electing body. As a result, they are illequipped to defend the faith by denying its opposite. For example, anyone with a minimum grasp of the historic faith should know that the teachings of Episcopal bishop Spong are rank heresy. Nevertheless, our bishops have never formally repudiated his teaching. My sense is that most of them instinctively feel they should guard the unity before they guard the faith. They put the third article of the Creed before the second, and they resonate with our presiding bishop who claims that truth "is discovered in a living way through the sharing of the truth which is embodied in each of us, in what might be called the scripture of our own lives."

Originally, the historic Episcopate entailed faithfulness to a received tradition. If we do not believe that, the Episcopal Church should discontinue the practice and the Lutheran Church should never accept it. Both Churches can ordain bishops as pastors, administrators, and overseers without a claim to ancient truth. If, however, both Churches decide that the historic succession witnesses to a prior revelation which creates the Church and not conversely, then its adoption will entail a rigorous commitment by the Church, its laity, pastors, scholars, and especially its bishops, to receive and forever hold "the faith once for all delivered to the saints."

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The Historic Episcopate

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