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[music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Hello. Welcome to my channel, Anglican Aesthetics. This is the first video in what will become my new studio here, which is kind of exciting. So, I'm going to try to uh decorate this out uh and build it out, but right now it's kind of bare bones. Uh, but we're going to we're going to do that. Um, my wife and I. But I wanted to get a video out while still fresh in people's mind on Gavin's recent video on apostolic succession. I'm getting this out quick because I think I want to get ahead of [laughter] I think Roman Catholics who are going to respond to it as well to just show an Anglican handling of the data. Okay. And why I think church history supports generally what I'll call an Anglican approach to this question of apostolic succession both better I think than Roman Catholic views and better than I think the view that um Gavin has sketched here uh and the purpose of a video like this right is that I am convinced that Protestant unity uh that the unity of the church in general is uh close to our Lord's part and one condition for unity will be a common governance structure. Uh I'll unpack why in a second. First, we're going to treat uh Gavin's arguments and then I'm going to provide something by way of response here.
So, there are a couple of arguments that Gavin uses. First, he argues that classic um case from scholarship. And by the way, a lot of people uh bash Gavin's scholarship, which is bizarre cuz we we swim in some of those circles together. And yeah, no one thinks he's a bad scholar [laughter] in those circles. So, it's kind of wild to like go on the internet and to like I don't know, hear people bash Gavin Ortland as a scholar. Um he is right about the general tenor of scholarship. However, what I'm going to argue is that uh within the general agreement that there is development of the episcoped, there is I think a viable view that was suggested by Richard Hooker a long time ago that while the terms of episcopos and presbyterity uh were uh interchangeable in the New Testament. Nevertheless, the form of the episcopit where you have one ruling presbittor as the summitative head over the other prespbittors was present. And part of I think a meta critique of Gavin's argument here that I'll just give up front is that it wasn't clear in the video whether Gavin seems to think that the three-fold office claims that the office of the bishop is just as distinct from the office of the presbbiterate as the presbbiterate is from the diacinate. And that's a significant point, right? Because if the episcopate is a distinction within the priesthood, well then actually we have a very ready-made path or I would argue uh very organic development and Gavin conceds that it's organic to some extent, but I would say very very continuous um development if the bishop is the ruling priest, the ruling presbyter, right? And the analogy you sometimes get from people like Aquinus or from uh Jerome is that of a general is still a soldier, right? A general is still a member of the army but is the summitative head of that those armymen that they lead. In a similar way, the bishop is a prespter, right? This is why the bishop can can consecrate the eucharist but nevertheless is the summitive head of so I will argue um of the presbytors that they lead. Okay.
So when we deal with the historical evidence that Gavin put up first there are a couple of of problems there. So he argues from the interchangeability of the terms in someone like Clement and in someone like uh in of course the New Testament that therefore the New Testament envisions really two offices. And he infers from this that it's congregational, right? That you might have a plurality of presbytors or elders that run a kind of local congregation. Here's the problem with that claim. Historically at the time of the writing of let's say first clement first of all it is very significant that it is clement who writes on behalf of who the whole church of Rome at the time and there is no other summitive head suggested in other words Ignatius's or when we go to Ignatius right or we go to um uh polycarp right of there are no other bishop suggested to be in church history the bishop of Antioch or the bishop of Rome, right? There were no other competing claims that okay, yeah, Clement was a bishop, but so was thus the so- and so, so was this person, so was that person. That was never claimed in church history. None of the fathers remember this. And now Gavin sort of dismisses the claim that Timothy and Titus were bishops. But significantly this is how Irenaeus right remembers Timothy and Titus to have been bishops which is why they're told to appoint presbytors and they're not told to instruct the prespitators they appointed to go and appoint prespits. Okay. So those are, I would argue, pretty significant pieces that the lack of competing claims that there there wasn't just, you know, Clement was never considered a bishop, but there were also other bishops, uh, is significant. And secondly, uh, note how it is a regional claim. The church of Rome at the time of the apostle Paul subsisted in multiple houses likely. Okay, multiple houses across Rome connected in a network that you didn't have like uh, you know Bob's Church of Rome and Bill's Church of Rome meeting at different houses, right? And then local elders uh meeting, you know, shephering those those people. You had houses that existed in a network where Christians met that were overseen by one ruling presporter overseeing a bunch of other presbytors, right? Who cared for those Christians meeting at those houses. Okay, that actually is a primitive episcopet. That's that's regional, right? Uh one ruling prespter that is shephering other prespits who are stewarding these multiple houses, okay, in a region. It's a small little dasis that you have there. Uh that gets of course bigger over time. Uh of course the church of Rome, right? Um and this is true throughout the throughout the church.
The other crucial piece and this is often missed I would argue of scholarship and I'm going to give a reason why I think scholarship misses this [snorts] um is that the Episcopet developed everywhere independently uh across regions. One might point to Alexandria and say, "Well, for a time, you know, they had Presbyterian succession. Okay, but they still appointed a bishop and they still clearly wanted the Episcopal structure." Now, again, some of the evidence Gavin cites, as I've defended on this channel and on my Substack, would support the notion that Presbyterial succession is a valid mode of succession, even if a defective and non ideal mode of succession. Hence why I would say Lutheran churches and Presbyterian churches generally speaking are um are valid. Um but that said um it's not ideal and uh the fact that this develops everywhere the three-fold office tells you something about how the tradition is being remembered in the communities themselves. Um, the other thing I'll say about some of the historical data Gavin cited is this. Scholarship often tends to proceed from the assumption of alienation from the past. Here's what I mean. Scholarship is really uh skeptical of claims that view oneself as part of a a unified tradition. At least New Testament scholarship is. People now in philosophy are moving away from this like towards metaodernity. New Testament scholarship and Old Testament and church history for whatever reason always tend to be like 30 years in the p past in terms of intellectual trends. But um for now, for instance, to give an example, uh I once got docked, right? And this is in an evangelical school. This was at Trinity um for a New Testament paper because I was [snorts] interpreting what Paul said in Ephesians 2 about one new man in the place of two. And I wanted to argue, no, he's not arguing. This isn't replacement theology. Um, I was arguing that and I was docked because I cited Paul in Romans 11 because I see his thought as as his thought as a whole needing to be a kind of conceptual structure uh in which to interpret. And then I cited some of the church fathers for reception. But I got docked for that, right? Because the assumption of New Testament scholarship, right, is that when you take an epistle like Ephesians and church history often, right, you take an epistle like Ephesians and there you have a theology of Ephesians. Well, then you have a theology of Romans and a theology of Galatians. And these are somehow hermetically almost sealed from each other. And I just think philosophically that's a that's a terribly that's a terrible premise, right? I I just utterly disagree with that premise. So for instance, this is why right if I were to cite um a church father as evidence uh that that St. Paul meant uh a given interpretation of the text would never take that right uh the society of biblical literature would handwave that away. You can't use the church fathers to interpret the New Testament. Uh and I I utterly dismiss that premise. Godr Hans Garimer pointed pointed out that any view we give is situated within a tradition a c a tradition that has been forged before we were here and is being forged by us. So for instance, if I were to say the nword, right, that has certain there's a reason I say the n-word rather than just the word, right? Uh that has certain a tradition of usage and certain connotations that go along with that tradition of usage. And so my language itself that I'm using carries with it the history in which those language patterns emerged. Thought works very much like this as well. Thought reflects the horizon in which it emerged and also moves that horizon along. Okay. So when we think about the communities started by the apostles and taught by the apostles, my contention over and against SPL, over and against some of these church history uh historians and the New Testament historians especially is that um the way a tradition develops can actually tell you how the author meant that tradition. If that author founded that community that received that text. In other words, let's say uh some teaching in Romans is received the same way in the church of Rome and the church of Antioch and Ephesus in the second century. That I would argue is strong evidence that the text should be taken that way. Now again, that would never pass SPL, but I I think that's actually because SPL is biased against viewing themselves as part of a living tradition and wants to pretend to a level of objectivity that no one else has pretended to in a long time. Right? Again, they're often 30, 40 years uh behind intellectual trends. So because of this, because SPL often views or texts and a lot of the guild views texts as hermetically sealed from each other, it becomes elicit to interpret Clement in light of Ignatius or in light of Irenus even though even if among themselves they're not bickering about how each other should be understood. So for instance um Irenaeus right truly clearly treats Clement as the bishop of Rome the bishop of Rome no one else in the second century disputes that okay um Ignatius of Antioch right when he's talking about the church's need to submit to the bishop no one is saying no that's not how my church works and no one is saying well there are other bishops what do the other bishops of Antioch say like no one says that at So I think that's a significant um ideological flaw just of the guild in general that there's a failure to think of oneself as part of a living tradition and therefore to think of thought as emergent from within community. Again they've wanted to pretend to a level of objectivity uh that they have never had. [laughter] And you know that this is why I mean gosh like some of the worst arguments against the deity of Christ I've heard from SPL like okay well Paul couldn't have meant that Jesus was Yahweh because that thought would have that thought was too complex developed like that sometimes that's and I'm I'm not kidding like sometimes that's the level of argumentation you get from from these places. So like um you know I I don't know. Yeah.
There here I'm offering arguments to suggest why we Hooker might have been right. You know uh I think his interpretation of how the episcop developed is a lot more plausible especially again because you find this everywhere very early on. Okay. Now, what we're going to do is I just want to document how the Anglican divines argue for the Episcopet. This comes from a paper in progress I'm writing uh that kind of goes through the dispute between the Anglicans and the Puritans um in the the uh the 16th and 17th century. And we're going to take a look at how the Anglicans have argued for the binding necessity of the Episcopet. um in order to proceed as the church. This is a paper I wrote called Anglicanism and the Normbitive Force of Tradition, preparing it for publication. But I wanted to go over some of the selections here because it's actually helpful in helping us understand how the Anglican divines were thinking about the Episcopet as binding even if even if it's merely of ecclesiastical law rather than of divine law as such. Now to give a little bit of context and you can find this context in the Anglican catechetical initiative videos. The controversy over the episcopate it comes into focus in the debate between Thomas Cartwright Puritan leader within the church of England who wants to make the church of England more like the church of Geneva with you know this sort of presbyverial four-fold office that Geneva has. John Witgift is the Archbishop of Canterbury and is arguing for the preservation of the Episcopit. Now, uh Witgif's argument, I'm going to read two selections here. This is from volume one of the works of John Witgift put out by the Parker Society. Uh this is from page 191 here. And it reads as following. So on the one hand, he says this. I deny that script the scriptures do expressly particularly uh do express particularly everything that is to be done in the church which you yourself afterward confess or that it do set down any one certain form and kind of government of the church to be perpetual for all times persons and places without alteration. So, interestingly, Whitift is going to deny that scripture sets this out. And then he says, on the other hand, this I do not think that that which the church hath once determined by long continuence proved to be necessary, ought to be altered without great and special consideration. I say with St. Augustine epistle 18 to Januarius if anything be universally observed of the whole church not to observe that or to call it into question is mere madness. Therefore, seeing that it hath had of such time of continuence that it was for so good and just causes appointed and is so generally observed of the church I do not think it now arbitrary to nor to be changed. So he grants that it's not dejured deino but nevertheless affirms that good and just causes and the continual use of the episcopet entails that it's not to be changed.
Now in book one of ecclesiastical polity uh in the laws of ecclesiastical polity Richard Hooker is going to set a foundation for the defense of the episcopates. I'm going to read uh starting from here. While witgift produces no sustained defense of this principle, Richard Hooker would in the laws of eccles ecclesiastical polity book one. Hooker lays the foundation for a strong defense of tradition. The structure of the argument is as follows. He posits two eternal laws. The first eternal law is that order which God elects as the pattern and rule of his own actions and history and call it providence. Whereas the second eternal law is that order which God dines to plant in things which governs that thing towards its intended perfection. So in other words, that first eternal law, right, you can sort of envision it as like the law of God's decree, that logic which God has committed to in uh ruling the universe by his providence and that second internal law as that order that God has built in things that directs them along to their final end. Reading on, hence a plant proceeds towards sunlight to attain its perfected end via the law which God has as it were impressed into its being. The second eternal law is thus operative in the very structure of created reality. The second eternal law with respect to rational creatures is the order they must apprehend and live by in order to flourish. Rebellion against the second eternal law is possible, but the first eternal law enfolds rebellion into the overall tapestry of goodness. How can rational creatures apprehend the order they ought to follow from that second eternal law? Since the second eternal law proposes the good for each creature, the task of the rational creature is to apprehend the good, which is the unity of goodness and beauty. For Richard Hooker, in a central paragraph, Hooker writes, quote, "The most certain token of evident goodness is if the general persuasion of all men accounts it so. Therefore, a common received error is never utterly overthrown until we go from signs unto causes, and show some some manifest root or fountain thereof, common to all, whereby it may clearly appear how it has come to pass that so many have been deceived. In such cases, surmises and slight probabilities will not suffice, because the universal consent of men is the most perfect and strongest kind, comprehending only signs and tokens of goodness. Things casual vary, and that which a man chances to think well of cannot always have the same fortune. Wherefore, although we know not the cause, yet thus much we may know that some necessary cause exists whenever the judgments of all men generally or for the most part run one in the same way, especially in matters of natural discourse. For of things necessarily and naturally done, no more is affirmed than this. They keep either always or for the most part one tenure. The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God himself. For Hooker, the universal consent of men is the strongest evidence for discerning where the good in a particular domain of inquiry lies. Consider the moral functions of the classics. The literary classics are chosen owing to their consented upon power for moral formation. or consider the following advice of the medical community. No one upon hearing some recommendation from their doctor thinks uh that they need to repeat experiments and research that led the medical community to received consensus. On the other hand, if one's doctor departs from that consensus, that might motivate a patient to obtain a second opinion. And then in book seven, Hooker actually does apply this to the episcopate and he says the following in accordance with that argument for uh the role of consent as an epistic means to discerning wisdom in a given domain of inquiry. He writes the following quote. Some wicked thing hath undoubtedly bewitched us if we forsake that government whose use universal experience hath for so many years approved and take ourselves unto a regiment neither appointed by God himself as its favorers pretend or even until yesterday heard of among men. Okay. So he goes on to write right like so remember longstanding consent is as the voice of God. So he uh writes the following quote that they held this order. So the church held this order as a thing received from the blessed apostles themselves and authorized even from heaven. We may perhaps more easily prove than obtain that they all shall grant it who see it proved. St. Augustine satith it down for a principle that where whatsoever positive order the whole church everywhere doth observe the same it must needs to have received from the very apostles themselves. Unless perhaps some general council were the authors of it. When he treats Aras of Sebast who like the Presbyterians, he was condemned as a heretic for arguing for the equality of bishops with priests. Uh he writes and remember Aras is not the same as Aras the author of the Aryan heresy. So I'm trying to trying to pronounce that differently. I might be butchering the pronunciation but oh well. Okay. Quote, "Are we to think Aras had it wrong in being judged an heretic for holding this opinion? Surely, if heresy be an error falsely fathered upon scriptures, but indeed repugnant to the truth of the word of God, and by the consent of the universal church and councils, or in her contrary uniform practice throughout the whole world, declared to be such, and the opinion of Aras in this point be a plain error of that nature. There is no remedy, but that Aras so schismatically and stiffly maintaining it, must even stand where Epanius and Augustine have placed him. An error repugnant unto the truth of the word of God is held by them, whatsoever they be, that stand in defense of any conclusion drawn erroneously out of scripture and untruly thereonfathered. The the opinion of Aras, therefore, being falsely collected out of scripture, must needs be acknowledged in error repugnant unto the truth of God. And I'll read a little bit of what Thomas Bilson says because I think it's it's instruction. So, Bishop Bilson uh does argue for the episcopate as part of divine law, but he gives the proof of it as as follows. Quote, "Whereof we need no further sure proof than this, that the whole church then and ever since did and do uphold all precepts, rules, orders, and admonitions of the apostles contained in their epistles for the authentical oracles of the Holy Ghost and parts of the canonical scriptures. They no doubt had the same authority speaking which they had writing. And consequently, no pastor or teacher might them more resist or refuse the apostles doctrines, decrees or doings than we may now their letters, sermons or epistles. So he taught that all that the apostles taught constitutes the rule of faith for the churches. And that was that was Bilson um arguing this.
So let's summarize the argument that we might make here. Even if one says that the formal episcopate is of human law, right? Even if you said it was instituted by the apostles but maybe as an ecclesiastical discipline, uh but liable to change if the whole church did it. Hooker is arguing that even then you still couldn't change it right now. Uh we still have to abide from it everywhere. And the reason for this is because um that which has been universally received in the churches functions as a law that must be taken as the voice of God in the absence of any demonstration that the consent of the church proceeded from bad causes. Right? That's never been done for the Episcopet. And I I don't know how one could frankly show that the Episcopet unless you just try to argue that the Episcopet is just intrinsically corrupt which well no it mirrors so many forms of of human life right uh one ruling summitive head over others and then deacons right that's the basic form of the episcopet uh and then the language develops right where the term episcopos is applied to the ruling presbyter the high priest right um that high priest language by the way is used in some of the ordination rights Um so uh oh I lost my train of thought here. What was I saying? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So um now why one can always ask the question okay but why why is it obligatory on me as an individual to abide by the universal custom of the church? And here I want to argue the following. And again this is in alignment with hooker in book one but it's also in alignment with how we have conceived of political societies of body politics since the time of Aristotle Aristotle in book one of the politics and you can see I've documented this on Javier's uh channel in my discussion on cristic liberalism I might post that video on my channel as well with his permission uh but um the what constitutes the unity of a body politic is its constitutional form according to Aristotle. So for instance, what is it that makes the England of today continuous with the monarchy established in the 10th century? Well, it's that the basic constitutional form, I'm not talking about written down in the constitution, although writing kind of fixes the constitutional form. Uh but the basic constitutional form that by which the society has governed has uh uh constituted its formal structures that is the basic form of the body politic. So for Aristotle, right, if you were to abolish the monarchy in England, you've essentially gotten rid of England as it had been, right, the country of England that existed from the 9th century to the present uh would cease to exist and it would be a different body politic because then you have a different constitutional form that underwrites that body politic. That seems basically right to me, right? It's covenantal, which makes sense, right? With the structure of creation being covenantal. Especially if you're reformed, you should just give me this, right? Uh but you know, it it's it's this idea that the the forms of life that a group of men and women have consented to live by and structured their lives by are the sort of organizing principles for the continuity of their life together as a joint body politic. Now if one applies that logic to the church, remember the church is not as Richard Field said right in his book of the church, the church is not merely an assembly of men and women but a visible society of men and women. The church is a body politic and as such if we claim to be the self-same society as the church that has gone before us, we ought to hold the selfsame governance structures such that I can say of someone else's ministers, yeah, those are ministers of the church, right? That they would they wouldn't need to be reordained because I count them as ministers of the church. So um that would then be the natural law basis for saying something like the episcopit needs to continue because the way we have structured ourselves as the church as a family through the the times if we want to say we're part of the same visible family then we need to adopt the same governance structure.
Now, counterpoint, uh, a Roman Catholic, right, might take that up and say, "Yeah, that's exactly why you should submit to the Pope." So, here's here's my argument, right, is that, yeah, I would have loved to if the Pope had not excommunicated us and not lifted that sentence of excommunication. Remember, the excommunications that fell on Luther are still in place. So those who believe what Luther believed right with the bull that actually enacted the sentence of excommunication cannot be part of the Roman church to this day. That excommunication has never been lifted. And the excommunication of on all of those who believe the certain sets of doctrines that Luther believed, which I do by the way, [laughter] like and the Council of Trent, right, anatizes anyone who believes that if you believe justification takes away all temporal punishment whenever someone is justified, you fall to mortal sin, you repent, you're you're back in, you're put back into Christ. And my position along with the broad broader Anglican tradition along with Protestantism is that through faith alone you're completely forgiven of all of your sins. That's ana anathematized right at the council of Trent. Okay. So um you know the unfortunately what has happened to the body politic of the church is that wicked schismatics particularly in Rome at the time of the reformation caused the split and they split the society into multiple branches. Now it's still the self-same society that proceeds from that trunk right the one holy catholic and apostolic church confessed in the nyine creed is the self-same church that was split by the sea of Rome unfortunately during the time of the reformation um but that society does now still exist in the form of these branches unfortunately so our unity has been tainted but that means then it's incumbent on us as Christians today who inherit these conflicts to try our best to work back to being one visible society, one truly visible society again. Now we have a couple of rights that connect us to that one visible society. Baptism, the Eucharist, right? But there is a genuine marredness or brokenness. But our goal is always to be in continuity right with the visible society of the church as it has preceded us. And that visible society as far as we know prior to right Baptists has existed and prior to Presbyterians has existed in the three-fold office. And the most deviation you ever get from that is Presbyterial succession and limited circumstances uh where they're actually craving a bishop. So we're not free then to to deviate from that structure.
So to sum up the data here, so Gavin's question at the end, okay, how can you impose the episcopet if it's not of divine law, render it obligatory? Because not all that is obligatory is of divine law, right? What's necessary to salvation is specified in scripture. It's not as though Baptists are going to be damned for being Baptists, right? We believe this as Anglicans over and against Roman Catholics, right? Um that yes, I agree the Episcopet is not very clearly laid out in scripture and even the way you sort of kind of imply it is by situating those texts in the broader community that received those texts. Um so you know it's not as clear as something like justification by faith alone as union with Christ. Um things like this, right? Nevertheless, because we're not only obliged by divine law, but because natural law is immediate means of obligation that and remember when we're thinking about divine law and natural law, we got we got to clarify these categories really quick. Divine law, when we speak of that term technically, we're not talking about law that is from God and law that isn't from God because natural law is from God, right? The structure of nature is from God. When we're talking about natural law and divine law, we're talking about divine revelation, the obligations given to us by divine revelation and the obligations that are still given to us through the mediate structures of the world. And hence, yes, the consent of the church is as the voice of God in matters that don't contradict scripture. Now, of course, we can't ever be obligated to do something that directly contradicts scripture. This over and against Rome's insistence on communion in one kind. The declaration of the forbidding of the cup to the ley. Uh the declaration that you can be forgiven through taking up a crusade through non-combat to against non-combatants uh for the cause of exterminating Christian heresy. Okay. So these things we can say yeah that the church has no authority to do that. That contradicts scripture. But for those matters that don't, like the episcopate, if it's a matter of universal consent, then we have to go with it. If we're intending to be one visible body politic, I hope that helps. U Gavin, if you watch this, let me know your thoughts. I want to end with just an appreciation of Gavin's ministry. Like he's he's just such a model of good scholarship, charitable engagement, uh and how to interact in this space well to generate uh much more light than heat. So, it's always a joy to interact with him and he's just obviously filled with the spirit, filled with love for Christ. Uh and yeah, that's why I hope, you know, I I think Gavin, you know, would make a wonderful Anglican priest. [laughter] So, you know, brother, I I I hope one day uh to to, you know, see you ordained as an Anglican priest. That would be amazing. Uh but I hope this video blesses you all. Thank you so much for watching. God bless. >> [music]