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The Bishop-in-Presbytery: An Australian Reaction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
The proposals contained in the Report entitled ‘Relations Between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches’ are sufficiently far-reaching to command wide attention. And this is what, in some quarters, they have attracted—though one suspects that the attention given them has not always been born of knowledge, or of an interest quite devoid of mercenary considerations. In essence, the proposals call for a modification of Church polities to provide for ‘Bishops’ in Presbyterian Churches and for ‘Elders’ in Anglican Churches; and it is the effect of such a modification, as it relates to Presbyterian Churches, and to the Presbyterian Church of Australia in particular, that is the subject of these comments.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1958
References
page 375 note 1 Published simultaneously, April 1957, in Edinburgh (by the Saint Andrew Press) and in London (by the S.P.C.K.) My references are to the Scottish edition.
The four Churches represented in the Conversations are: The Church of England, The Church of Scotland, The Episcopal Church in Scotland and The Presbyterian Church of England.
page 375 note 2 Both terms are placed in inverted commas at this point, to indicate that their connotations may not be just what they are in other contexts.
page 375 note 3 This is stated specificially on p. 23.
page 376 note 1 The results of these earlier Conversations are referred to summarily on pp. 9–10, and Appendices (pp. 33–42) give extracts from the earlier Reports and from the consequent decisions of the several Church authorities.
page 376 note 2 pp. 9, 15.
page 376 note 3 p. 23.
page 376 note 4 p. 29.
page 376 note 5 p. 11. The Report indicates four ‘initial and largely tacit agreements’ (pp. 12–15), and five ‘Biblical and doctrinal considerations’ which should be held in view in any scheme of mutual adaptation (pp. 17–18).
page 376 note 6 p. 16.
page 376 note 7 pp. 17, 29.
page 377 note 1 p. 23.
page 377 note 2 p. 28.
page 378 note 1 pp. 25–26.
page 378 note 2 A significant change, of course, is that the participation of the Moderator would be thought of as necessary to the Ordination.
page 379 note 1 The Episcopalian members of the Conference made this comment: ‘There might be anxiety if the place of Bishops as collectively having a necessary voice in matters of doctrine were not safeguarded. Episcopalians, regarding Confirmation as a pastoral link between the Bishop and the lay members of his flock, would express the hope that the way might be left open for the episcopal administration of the rite of Confirmation in the proposed changes and that in the experience of the new Church order it might come to be widely and in the end generally used’ (p. 26).
page 379 note 2 Among the five ‘biblical and doctrinal considerations’ mentioned in the Report as agreed upon is this: ‘Episcope, far from being exclusively concerned with administration, can be considered under five aspects: (a) Apostolic mission and authority; (b) The pastoral office; (c) The continuance of the Ministry of Word and Sacraments through ordination; (d) Guardianship of truth and exclusion of error; (e) Representation of the Church in its unity and universality’ (p. 18).
page 379 note 3 p. 22.
page 380 note 1 Henderson, G. D., Presbyterianism, Aberdeen, University Press, 1954, p. 160Google Scholar.
page 380 note 2 Parker, T. M., in The Apostolic Ministry (edited by Kirk, K. E.), London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1946, p. 384Google Scholar.
page 380 note 3 G. D. Henderson, op. cit., p. 39.
page 381 note 1 G. D. Henderson gives a number of examples of this way of thinking in the sixteenth century; op. cit., pp. 46–50.
page 381 note 2 One thinks immediately of the ‘bishops’ in the Reformed Church of Hungary and of the ‘presidents’ in the Reformed Church of France, as well as of the ‘superintendents’ proposed in the First Book of Discipline.
page 381 note 3 For a good deal of what follows I am indebted to Ross, J. M., Presbyterian Bishops?, London, Presbyterian Publishing Committee, c. 1953, pp. 5–6Google Scholar.
page 382 note 1 For instance, there is nothing in the present Rules to prevent a Presbytery electing the same man as Moderator for a number of years in succession and giving him whatever authority it chooses.
page 382 note 2 These functions are represented in the Report as: ‘to be the chief minister of the Word and Sacraments; to be the proper minister for the ordination of men to the ministry of the Word and Sacraments; to be the chief pastor of clergy and laity alike; to represent the whole Church to the diocese and the diocese to the whole Church; to have authority in matters of doctrine-vested in the collective Episcopate but exercised in connexion with the Church as a whole’ (p. 21).
page 383 note 1 p. 21.
page 384 note 1 The lines along which such a contention may be advanced appear in two articles contributed to the Scottish Journal of Theobgy by Lusk, D. C. (vol. 3, pp. 255–277, ‘What is the Historic Episcopate?’CrossRefGoogle Scholar; vol. 8, pp. 1–19, ‘Scotland and England: Our Next Task in Church Union’) and one contributed to the same journal by G.S.M. Walker (vol. 8, pp. 238–54, ‘Scottish Ministerial Orders’).
page 384 note 2 It is interesting to observe what has been written on this score by two of the contributors to the Anglo-Catholic apologia, The Apostolic Ministry (edited by Kirk, K. E.), London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1946Google Scholar.
Gregory Dix writes: ‘An infinitesimal proportion of our laity have been baptised by their own bishop, or have even once in their lives made their communion at his hands. The second-century laity expected to do so as a matter of course every Sunday. They had all not only been confirmed by him but baptised by him (or at least in his presence); they were married by him, and if they fell into grave sin were disciplined and absolved by him personally. They expected to be visited by him when they were ill, to be pacified by him if they quarrelled with one another, and buried by him when they died. All this was his⋯lακοπ⋯—his particular ‘function’ in the life of his Church. They all expected, too, to have some voice in the selection of his successor’ (p. 293).
And K. D. Mackenzie writes: ‘The (Presbyterian) minister surrounded by his elders, “ordained” by the minister as they are commonly supposed to be, though without imposition of hands, does remind us irresistibly of the primitive bishop with his “crown” of presbyters. Indeed, the functions of the modern Presbyterian group exhibit a remarkable correspondence with those of the primitive one. The primitive presbyter (at any rate after the first century) was not, normally, a liturgical person. … It was in “ruling” that he came into his own. There his voice and vote were weighty, and no bishop would be likely to take any disciplinary or administrative action without being sure that he had his presbyters with him’ (p. 481).
page 385 note 1 Compare, however, the attitude of Lusk who underlines, as ‘a thing to make us worship’ (op. cit., vol. 9, p. 10), the fact that the Reformers, following principles derived from Scripture, reproduced the pattern of the second century without knowing that they did so.
page 385 note 2 p. 10.
page 385 note 3 It should not be forgotten that the proposals show that the Presbyterians have made plain that they do not regard laymen in Anglican Churches as having proper standing.
page 385 note 4 There is no insistence that all Ministers in Presbyterian Churches should be ‘re-ordained’ at a bishop's hand, only that episcopal ordination be the rule for the future.
page 386 note 1 The Report says of both Churches: ‘each claiming to possess gifts from the Head of the Church which it cannot in conscience deny or resign, and each being as desirous of respecting the conscience of the other as it is bound to obey its own’ (p. 16).
page 386 note 2 p. 15.
page 387 note 1 p.11.