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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2020
Drawing on the theological method of one of Anglicanism’s foremost theologians, this article defends key proposals of the recent Church of England-Methodist report, Mission and Ministry in Covenant. Some Anglicans have argued that it would be inconsistent with Anglican order to accept the proposed temporary period where Methodist ministers who had not been ordained by a bishop could serve in presbyteral Church of England roles. It finds clear theological rationale for the move in Hooker’s understanding of the episcopate which is matched in Anglicanism’s official formularies and its recent ecumenical dialogues. Highlighting clear historic and recent precedents for such a move, it demonstrates that bishops have never been considered so essential for Anglican order that they could never be dispensed with. Proposals like those in MMC can therefore be conscientiously accepted as consistent with Anglican self-understanding by the Church of England and other provinces considering such steps.
Philip Hobday is a parish priest in Reading, UK, and researching for a PhD in Theology at Durham University, UK.
2 I am very grateful to Professor Simon Oliver, Dr Kenneth Padley, and Professor Paul Avis for their help in the preparation of this article.
3 See Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order documents: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/311030/ACC-16-Receiving-One-Anothers-Ordained-Ministries.pdf (April 2016); http://www.anglicannews.org/media/1714415/iascufo-2017-communique.pdf, para. 3 (accessed 26 June 2019).
4 Mission and Ministry in Covenant, http://www.anglican-methodist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Mission-and-Ministry-in-Covenant.pdf (accessed 29 May 2018).
5 In the Spirit of the Covenant: Interim Report of the Joint Implementation Commission under the Covenant between the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the Church of England (2005), http://www.anglican-methodist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/JIC-2005-In-the-Spirit-of-the-Covenant.pdf, paras 6.4.6-6.4.23, 6.5.6-6.5.28 (accessed 22 March 2019).
6 See John Spurr, The Post-Reformation: Religion, Politics, and Society in Britain 1603–1714 (Harlow: Longman, 2006), pp. 144-47; for more detail, John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (London: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 30-61.
7 Section X of the Act of Uniformity 1662, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Cha2/14/4/section/X (accessed 21 March 2019).
8 An Anglican Methodist-Covenant, http://www.anglican-methodist.org.uk/full-text-of-the-covenant/, preface (accessed 29 May 2018).
9 Covenant, Commitment 1.
10 ‘Biblical Meditation’, in The Challenge of the Covenant: Uniting in Mission and Holiness (2013), http://www.anglican-methodist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JIC-2013-Challenge-of-the-Covenant.pdf, paras 10-14 (accessed 29 May 2018).
11 See the examples in the chapter on ‘Joint Consultation and Decision-Making’, in Challenge.
12 The Challenge of the Covenant: Uniting in Mission and Holiness: Report to the Methodist Conference and the General Synod of the Church of England (2014), http://www.anglican-methodist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/JIC-2013-The-Challenge-of-the-Covenant-Draft-Report-for-2014.pdf, para. 38 (accessed 29 May 2018).
13 For example, ‘Overseeing the Way of Uniting in Mission’, Challenge, paras 42, 52-53.
14 MMC, para. 21.
15 MMC, paras 27-30.
16 MMC, para. 42.
17 MMC, paras 60, 63, 69.
18 MMC, preface.
19 Andrew Davison, ‘An intolerable departure from order’, Church Times, 2 February 2018, https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/2-february/comment/opinion/an-intolerable-departure-from-order (accessed 16 May 2018).
20 http://anglicancatholicfuture.org/statement-anglican-catholic-future-report-mission-ministry-covenant/ (accessed 16 May 2018).
21 See Andrew Davison, Why Sacraments? (London: SPCK, 2013), p. 90.
22 As indeed in MMC, para. 63.
23 All quotations from The Book of Common Prayer from https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer (accessed 28 May 2018).
24 A.M. Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), p. 56.
25 Ramsey, Gospel and the Catholic Church, pp. 176, 52.
26 See Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 332-46.
27 P.D.L. Avis, The Anglican Understanding of the Church: An Introduction (London: SPCK, 2000), p. 22.
28 Davison, Why Sacraments?, p. 90.
29 Steven Croft, Ministry in Three Dimensions: Ordination and Leadership in the Local Church (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1999), p. 38.
30 Croft, Ministry in Three Dimensions, p. 39. There are thorough treatments of the New Testament evidence in chs. 4, 7 and 11.
31 Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: A Critical Edition with Modern Spelling (3 vols., ed. A.S. McGrade; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), cited by book, chapter, and section in the body of the article. This edition is a modernized version of the Folger text but the referencing is identical.
32 On the situation in the Elizabethan Church see Mark D. Chapman, Anglican Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pp. 52-57, 66-71; Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2nd edn, 2001), pp. 24-51.
33 W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglas (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes (London: SPCK, 1907), pp. 12, 16.
34 This reading of Hooker’s theological method is broadly shared for instance by W. David Neelands, ‘Hooker on Scripture, Tradition, and Reason’, in A.S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), pp. 75-94 (75); Egil Grislis, ‘Scriptural Hermeneutics’, in W.J. Torrance Kirby (ed.), A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 273-304 (279-80); Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided (London: Penguin, 2003), pp. 506-507.
35 Thus Grislis, ‘Hermeneutics’, p. 289; Nigel Voak, ‘Richard Hooker and the Principle of Sola Scriptura’, Journal of Theological Studies 59 (2008), pp. 96-139 (125-26).
36 Davison, Why Sacraments?, p. 89.
37 This reading of Hooker on episcopacy is broadly that of A.S. McGrade, ‘Episcopacy’, in Kirby, Companion to Richard Hooker, pp. 481-502; cf. M.R. Somerville, ‘Richard Hooker and his Contemporaries on Episcopacy: An Elizabethan Consensus’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1984), pp. 177-87 (177-80); Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 450-61.
38 McGrade, ‘Episcopacy’, p. 487 (emphasis original).
39 Text: J. Robert Wright (ed.), Quadrilateral at One Hundred: Essays on the Centenary of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral 1886/88–1986/9 (London: Mowbray, 1988), pp. vii-ix; for background Chapman, Anglican Theology, pp. 180-94.
41 See http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/209979/Towards-a-Symphony-of-Instruments-Web-Version.pdf, 2.3 (accessed 30 May 2018).
42 Quoted in MMC, paras 55, 20; cf. Avis, Anglican Understanding, pp. 22-23.
43 Resolutions IV.2.a and IV.1.c, The Lambeth Conference: Resolutions Archive from 1998, http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/76650/1998.pdf (accessed 28 May 2018).
44 Spurr, Post-Restoration, p. 145.
45 Spurr, Post-Restoration, pp. 146-47.
46 K.P.J. Padley, ‘Early Anglican Ecclesiology and Contemporary Ecumenism’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 9.1 (2009), pp. 3-16 (6-7). So also Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Why Anglicans Who Object to Reconciliation with Methodists Should Read More History’, https://www.christiantoday.com/article/why-anglicans-who-object-to-reconciliation-with-methodists-should-read-more-history/125402.htm (accessed 28 May 2018).
47 So Padley, ‘Early Anglican Ecclesiology’, p. 6.
48 Avis, Anglican Understanding, pp. 19-21, cf. Chapman, Anglican Theology, p. 195.
49 For the history see Bengt Sundkler, The Church of South India: Movement towards Union 1900–47 (London: Lutterworth Press, 1954).
50 See W.M. Jacob, The Making of the Worldwide Anglican Communion (London: SPCK, 1997), pp. 259-63.
51 Mary Tanner, ‘The Ecumenical Dimension of the Lambeth Conference’, in P.D.L. Avis and B.M. Guyer (eds.), The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity, and Purpose (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), pp. 358-87 (369).
52 Tanner, ‘Ecumenical Dimension’, p. 372.
53 Tanner, ‘Ecumenical Dimension’, p. 378.
54 See Chadwick, Ramsey, pp. 332-46.
55 Avis, Anglican Understanding, pp. 21-23 and idem., Reshaping Ecumenical Theology: The Church Made Whole (London: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 128-29.
56 Baptism Eucharist and Ministry (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), para. 37.
57 Baptism Eucharist and Ministry, para. 38.
58 See Apostolicity and Succession (London: Rapier Press, 1994), pp. 3-4, 19; Ingolf Dalferth, ‘Ministry and the Office of Bishop According to Meissen and Porvoo’, in Visible Unity and the Ministry of Oversight (London: Church House Publishing, 1997), esp. pp. 18-28.
59 Avis, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology, p. 139.
60 The Meissen Agreement: Texts (Council for Christian Unity: London, 1992), para. 16.
61 John Arnold, ‘From Meissen to Porvoo and Beyond’, Anglican and Episcopal History 73.4 (2004): pp. 466-82 (469).
62 Arnold, ‘Meissen to Porvoo’, p. 472.
63 Arnold, ‘Meissen to Porvoo’, p. 475.
64 Arnold, ‘Meissen to Porvoo’, p. 477.
65 ‘Porvoo Common Statement’ in Together in Ministry and Mission: The Porvoo Common Statement and Essays on Church and Ministry in Northern Europe (London: Church House Publishing, 1994), p. 26.
66 ‘Porvoo Statement’, p. 28.
67 Porvoo Declaration: Reference to the Dioceses and Study Guide (London: Council for Christian Unity, 1994), para. (b)(iv).
68 Called to Common Mission (1999), https://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/agreement-full-communion-called-common-mission, para. 16, and Commentary on Called to Common Mission (2002), https://www.episcopalarchives.org/sites/default/files/sceir/lutheran/Lutheran_TEC_Commentary_CCM_2002.pdf (accessed 28 May 2018).
69 See A Gift to the World: Co-Laborers in the Healing of Brokenness: The Episcopal Church and The United Methodist Church – A Proposal for Full Communion, https://www.episcopalchurch.org/files/documents/_a_gift_to_the_world.pdf (accessed 21 March 2019). There is a slight complexity here because the principal Methodist denomination in the United States (unlike that in the United Kingdom) includes a mix of predecessor denominations some of which had bishops and some not; see Gift to the World, p. 11.
70 Waterloo Declaration (2001), http://elcic.ca/What-We-Believe/Waterloo-Declaration.cfm (accessed 28 May 2018).
71 https://www.irishmethodist.org/covenant-between-methodist-church-ireland-and-church-ireland/ (accessed 21 March 2019).
72 Harold Miller, ‘Interchangeability of Ministries between Methodists and Anglicans in Ireland: A Wider Perspective’, One in Christ 48.2 (2014), pp. 167-78 (167-71). See also the articles by Gillian Kingston and David Carter in that edition.
73 Miller, ‘Interchangeability in Ireland’, pp. 171-73.
74 Miller, ‘Interchangeability in Ireland’, p. 173; MMC, paras. 69-73, sets out the range of precedents on this point.