Sarx

Continuing with our serialised posting of Rick Fabian’s Worship at St Gregory’s…

Recurrent threats to church unity dictated further changes. For a time each presbyteral council ordained one member as chief under the new arrangement, or imported a presbyter from another church and ordained him themselves. That is how the presbyters of Gaul ordained Irenaeus of Lyons their bishop, as Irenaus tells us. But persecutions (which always produced schism) and doctrinal strife (which usually did) stressed the sovereign’s role as unifier. To resolve doctrinal quarrels, the same Irenaeus offered a new tool: consult the churches that go back to the time of the first apostles (see above) and have been teaching the faith uninterruptedly ever since. These will have maintained an “APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION,” which is to say, a succession of teachers since apostolic times. By Iraneus’ time this meant a succession of sovereign bishops, each ordained by his fellow presbyters to replace their late chief. Irenaeus reasoned that the incumbents in these teaching jobs could therefore shine some apostolic light on contemporary doctrinal turmoil.

Such thinking effectively made the monarchical bishop titleholder for a local church’s institutional identity, and so essential for ordinations as well as inter-church councils. Gradually, therefore, the pattern reversed: instead of presbyter/bishops choosing and ordaining a sovereign from among themselves, the sovereign took the title bishop (supervisor) and ordained the presbyters (elders) and other clergy. As a final step, the fourth century council of Nicaea sent sovereigns to ordain each other, even requiring three bishops from neighboring churches to help ordain each new local apostolic successor — all to cement unity among churches that differed, as churches had always differed. Nineteenth century polemic much misinterpreted that Nicene pattern; therefore it is important to note that “apostolic succession” was not, and could never be, handed on from one bishop to the next, because the former titleholder had to die before a new bishop could be chosen. A new bishop derived his place in apostolic succession from his late local predecessor, not from his ordainers — as in fact medieval succession charts continued to show. (Charts written otherwise to serve nineteenth century arguments are just written wrong.)

Therefore modern ecumenical hopes need not run aground on apostolic succession. In New Testament terms, apostolic succession was created by the messianic laos, and belongs to all church structures that perpetuate continuity with the founding apostles’ preaching, whether monarchical bishops flower there or not. That is one reason ecumenists now speak of “historic episcopacy,” without empty claims to a primitive monarchical order somehow connected to Jesus. The fact that so many churches with different forms of apostolic succession are groping for agreement and unity today shows that Irenaeus’ idea halfway works!

Structural changes usually evoke new theories to explain them afterward. Inevitably, theories for the new sovereign episcopate reshaped the church’s use of scriptural language. Ignatius and other early apologists drew picturesque similes for liturgical functions: the deacon bustling around reminds us of the Servant Christ in Isaiah’s prophecy (diakonos means “servant”); the bishop presiding reminds us of God the Father—by keeping silent! Clement of Rome likened all clergy in general to the Hebrew cohens who shared Moses’ workload, including sacrificial work. (Clement apparently assumed the cohen himself offered the Old Testament sacrifices, like a pagan shrine cleric.) For a time such similes co-existed with New Testament talk about one united kingly and cohen-ish work of Christ and his whole church.

But in a portentous third century shift, Cyprian of Carthage re-applied the cohen (Latin sacerdos) imagery of the Letter to the Hebrews—now not to Christ’s messianic body, the church, but to the sovereign bishop exclusively. When presiding at the eucharistic meal, bishop Cyprian himself represented Christ, offering Christ’s blood in the true sanctuary; hence any who repudiated bishop Cyprian’s presidency cut themselves off from the work of Christ altogether. Ironically enough, Cyprian here reversed Clement’s argument for the same policy, against breaking ties with a duly ordained eucharistic presider. Clement had warned it would be embarrassing to fire cohens who disgraced the church, even if their ministering at the liturgy sullied the church’s identity with Christ. By contrast, Cyprian reasoned that Christians who deposed their cohen were effectively firing themselves, since Christ’s identity rested with him, and not with them! Cyprian’s heroic struggle against persecution and schism, and his own famous martyrdom, helped promote his argument for centuries.