seems to have been held to carry into effect a command of St Paul, as though he himself were present. There is no reason to think that Prophets and Teachers had any disciplinary powers whatever. They had a ministry' (just as healers, and speakers with tongues, and other gifted individuals had), which was to be used for the edification of the Church and not for their own self-exaltation. But there is no sign that the exercise of their ministry was other than spontaneous, or that it either needed or received any formal recognition from those amongst whom it was exercised: nor is there any sign that it gave them any kind of authority in the community, except such as an influential person must necessarily have enjoyed. We have considered in detail the conception of the earliest stages of the growth of the Christian Ministry which Lightfoot put forward in his famous Essay. It has been said of him in another connexion that 'he chose his ground so well' that it was not easy to dislodge him. That is eminently true in the present instance. Subsequent research or discovery has left his position as strong as ever. He would not have claimed more than to have given a reasonable interpretation of the available facts. New theories have since been offered to us: we can hardly say that new facts have come to light which require that his interpretation should be modified. What is the bearing of the results of our enquiry upon those questions in regard to the Christian Ministry which chiefly interest us today? During more than a generation the origins of that Ministry have been investigated from every point of view. The documents of the apostolic and sub-apostolic periods have been subjected to the acutest criticism. Every nook and cranny of the history has been diligently explored. No strange or startling revelations have been made. New theories have come and gone: they are coming and going still. But at most they serve to call attention to facts or groups of facts which have been long known, if insufficiently heeded. We see perhaps more clearly than we saw before that the Christian Ministry was gradually evolved, in response to fresh needs which came with new conditions, as the Church grew in numbers and enlarged its geographical boundaries. We find that a Threefold Ministry emerges, which has proved itself capable of satisfying the wants of the Christian Church from the second century to the present day. Not that the functions of ministry have always been distributed in exactly the same proportion between bishops, priests, and deacons each office has had an evolution of its own, and at the present moment the diaconate has, at least in the Western Church, fallen strangely into the background. But the whole framework remains, with its powers of adaptation by no means exhausted, the permanent gift of the Divine Spirit to the Church. We cannot go back, if we would, to the immaturity of primitive days. We need now, as much as the subapostolic age needed, a ministry which can hold the whole Church together. We cannot accept a congregational independence, which subordinates the minister, and which aims at offering examples of the corporate life on a limited scale without reference to the larger corporate life of the One Body of the Christ. Such examples indeed are of value as representing the truth that each group or community of Christians is pro tanto representative of the One Body; and indeed the corporate life is more easily exemplified on the smaller scale. Analogies might be found in the separate churches of Corinth and Ephesus, if it were possible to forget St Paul. But we cannot be content with any system of local independence, on however large a scale, which tries to live, so to speak, in the apostolic age without the unifying control of the Apostles. It is for the unity of the whole that the Historic Threefold Ministry stands. It grew out of the need for preservation of unity when the Apostles themselves were withdrawn. It is, humanly speaking, inconceivable that unity can be re-established on any other basis. This is not to say that a particular doctrine of Apostolic Succession must needs be held by all Christians alike. But the principle of transmission of ministerial authority makes for unity, while the view that ministry originates afresh at the behest of a particular church or congregation makes for division and subdivision. We have the happiness to live in days in which a reaction has set in against the long process of the division and subdivision of Christendom. Earnest spirits everywhere around us are yearning after unity. Ón a reasonable interrogation of history the principle can be seen to emerge that ministry was the result of commission from those who had themselves received authority to transmit it. In other words we are compelled to the recognition that, at least for the purposes of unity, the episcopate is the successor of the apostolate. [POSTSCRIPT (1920). Further investigation of the sources of the Teaching has convinced me that the theory of a Jewish manual called the Two Ways cannot be maintained. The argument (p. 71) based on the theory must therefore be modified. I should now prefer to deal with the point in question somewhat as follows. The author is directly dependent on the Epistle of Barnabas (xix 9 f.): 'Thou shalt love as the apple of thine eye every one that speaketh to thee the word of the Lord. Remember the day of judgement night and day.' The recollection of Heb. xiii 7 has led him to change the word of the Lord' into the word of God,' and to join 'Remember' with the preceding phrase. The precept framed by Barnabas has nothing to do with church-officers: he urges love to every one who gives the good word of edification. I hope shortly to have the opportunity of dealing fully with the relations existing between Barnabas, Hermas, and the Teaching. J. A. R.] ESSAY III APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION A. THE ORIGINAL CONCEPTION B. THE PROBLEM OF NON-CATHOLIC ORDERS C. H. TURNER, M.A. 'A. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION: THE ORIGINAL CONCEPTION I. Meaning of 'Apostolic Succession' not always the same. Situation out of which the original emphasis on it grew up: the danger to the Church from the Gnostic movement, and the Catholic appeal to the Apostolic tradition in the threefold form of the Creed, the Scriptures, and the Successions. For a bishop to be in this sense in the succession from the Apostles a double qualification requisite: in technical language, he must have both orders and jurisdiction. PP. 95-108 II. The conception traced in further detail during the first two hundred years after the Apostles. Clement of Rome : Ignatius: special prominence in Hegesippus and Irenaeus: Tertullian and Origen: possible traces of developement in Hippolytus and Cyprian. pp. 108-132 III. Eusebius' large use of succession' language, as a guarantee of historical continuity: the 'succession from the Apostles' of the bishops of the great sees, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, in the forefront both of the History and of the Chronicle. Were the Apostle-founders reckoned during early times in the episcopal lists ? PP. 132-142 B. THE PROBLEM OF NON-CATHOLIC ORDERS I. Can the Apostolic Succession exist outside the Church? The primitive view implicitly rejected all non-catholic Sacraments: but the problem of the relation of the Sacraments to the Church became crucial in the third century-first as to baptism, and especially the baptism of schismatics. In the clearing up of ideas three views emerged: St Cyprian rejects all baptism outside the Church; Rome admits any baptism given with right form and matter; the Easterns admit in some cases, reject in others, but with a tendency to extend the area of admissions. So far no non-catholic Sacrament ratified except Baptism. PP. 143-161 II. In particular Orders conferred outside the Church universally rejected, partly (a) because none who had been put to public penance could either receive or exercise Holy Orders, partly (b) on the ground that the Holy Spirit could not be given, either in Confirmation or Ordination, save within the Church. With the growth of divisions in the fourth century came the desire to stretch every available point in the interest of peace (1) where there was no formally organised schism, by giving the separated clergy, when reconciled, authority to minister; (2) where there was organised separation, by reordaining the clergy on reconciliation. pp. 161–179 III. A third and more drastic solution was first put into coherent shape by St Augustine, namely that all Sacraments duly administered outside the Church were valid, although the real benefit of them only accrued on union with the Church. And this was the view which finally prevailed throughout the West. Nevertheless to Augustine the idea of the Succession was still confined within the Church. IV. Conclusion. NOTES PP. 179-194 Use of succession-language in non-Christian sources: p. 197. Use of succession-language in early Christian writers: p. 199. Chronology of the life of Hegesippus: p. 207. Meaning of xeiрobeтovμévous in canon 8 of Nicaea: p. 208. The Letters of Severus of Antioch: p. 211. |