04 - The Church

IV THE CHURCH THE Church in the Apostles’ Creed is called holy and catholic. In the Nicene Creed it is called one, catholic, and apostolic. We may say that there are, then, four notes of the Church, which, for convenience, I arrange in this order: apostolic, catholic, holy, and one. That the Church be apostolic, it must have a continuous life from the earliest time. There is a verse in the book of the Acts which summarizes this continuity, ’They continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers? [Acts 2:42], As we look over Christendom we see some people who have remained loyal to the Apostles’ fellowship that is, the apostolic ministry; but they have frankly abandoned the Apostles’ teaching. This is true of the Church of Rome, which has full fellowship with the historic ministry, but has abandoned the New Testament as a full test of doctrine, adding much, through a theory of development, which is quite different from the teaching of the Apostolic Church; adding, indeed, two doctrines so lately as the nineteenth century. This theory of development must be respected; for the Holy Spirit was promised to guide the Church. On the other hand, most of the Protestant Churches while testing all their doctrines by the primitive teaching of the New Testament, by unhappy circumstances either were forced to abandon the historic continuity of their ministry with the past, or deliberately chose to make the break. This break in fellowship occurred during the Reformation in the sixteenth century. At this same time the Church of England was seeking a return in doctrine to the simplicity and purity of the Apostles’ teaching; but so large a proportion of the clergy, as well as laity, went over to the Reformation, that the historic ministry was maintained. Thus the Church of Eng land and its daughters in America and in the English colonies, have steadfastly clung to the Apostles’ teaching and fellow ship. It has deep regard for what is called tradition, but tests this tradition by the New Testament. The breaking of bread refers without doubt to the Holy Communion. The prayers refer to Christian worship. From the worship of the synagogue, and especially from the Lord’s Prayer, a form of Christian worship was beginning, at fimmore or less free, with large discretion for the ministrant, and only gradually crystalizing into definite forms. With a variety of emphasis, and with many shades of usage and teaching, all Christian people have, with few exceptions, ’continued in the breaking of bread and the prayers/ The Quakers and some others have abandoned the Holy Communion in any form.

It becomes important to make clear that the Church of England, our Mother Church, did not in any sense begin new in the time of Henry VIII. Just what did happen in sixteenth-century England?

Henry VII had arranged for the marriage of his son Arthur, Prince of Wales, with Katharine of Aragon, the daughter of the rich King of Spain. The marriage had barely been solemnized when Arthur died.

Only one third of the ample dowry pledged by the Spanish King had been paid, and the avaricious English King could not endure the thought of losing the rest of it. So he asked the Pope to grant a dispensation and to allow the new Prince of Wales, Henry, to marry his brother’s widow.

Prince Henry was little considered in the arrangement: King Henry did it all. The Prince formally protested, but the bargain was made; and, when he became King, he loyally married Katharine, who bore him a daughter, Mary. But there was no son to succeed him as King. We can make no plea for the character of Henry. He was able and strong, but his personal life cannot be defended. He fell in love with Anne Boleyn, and, wishing to marry her, appealed to the then-reigning Pope asking him to cancel the action of his predecessor, and declare the marriage with his brother’s widow illegal and therefore null and void.

Evidently the Pope of Henry’s time was quite willing to comply with his request. The only difficulty was that Charles Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, was the nephew of Katharine, and strenuously objected to having the Pope humiliate his aunt. So while Henry made his plea for the divorce, Charles made an equal demand for maintaining the marriage. The Pope was hard put. He did not wish to alienate the powerful King of England, and he wished still less to alienate the more powerful King of Spain. He gave both Kings hope, trusting that he might be able in some way to avoid a decision. But Henry was too impatient to wait longer, and appealed to the Archbishop of Canter bury and the English Parliament to sustain him in the legality of his matrimonial change. They did sustain him. Without help from Rome, Katharine was declared divorced from her husband; Henry was immediately married to Anne; and Anne’s daughter was to become one of the greatest rulers England has ever had. Politically, by this act, England was free of the Pope’s dominion, and Henry called himself the Head of the English Church.

What we need most to remember is that even so strong a personality as Henry could not have accomplished this declaration of independence, had not the people, together with their ablest leaders, been in sympathy with him. The noblest of the ecclesiastics and the more intelligent and spiritually minded laity had for a long time chafed under the scandals of the Mediaeval Church. With the blood of free islanders in their veins, feeling their foreign bondage more than they could bear, they only awaited an opportunity to bring the English Church back to that Apostolic simplicity of which they were beginning to read in the New Testament, both Greek and English. They now knew that the Church had been overlaid with teaching and traditions which had nothing to do with the primitive age, and which had well-nigh destroyed the continuity of its life and doctrine with the Apostolic past.

Henry followed as well as led his people. The development of the English Church under Edward VI and Elizabeth was from within, and carried with it a large proportion of the English people. When Richard Hooker, one of the wisest and best of men, wrote his ’ Ecclesiastical Polity/ he showed how sanely and how learnedly the Church of England had been led to restore its Apostolic simplicity. Continuity with the past was regained in England by the Re formation, just as an old house, covered with trees and ivy is sometimes quite for gotten; but, by courageous cutting away of all foreign growth, is freed from its disguise, and stands revealed in all its stately lines, its stone shining in the sun. It is not a new house, but a house restored to its pristine beauty. The Church of England lost continuity with its overgrown trees and vines, to regain a sturdier, more essential continuity with the long and great past.

We read in the Book of the Acts that the Earliest Church was the most perfect of democracies. ’All that believed were together, and had all things common’ [Acts 2:44]. This full realization of the Christian fellowship did not long last. Worldliness and love of power insidiously crept in. Force, again and again, has taken the place of love. Men like Saint Francis have risen from time to time to plead for the way of Christ, the way of patience and sacrifice and love, listening to the Lord Himself when He said, ’One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren/ Because our own Communion tries hard to be a true Christian democracy, we may rejoice in our further effort to return to the simplicity of the Apostles. The Church of England was established in America with the first permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.’ Because at the time of the Revolution many of the clergy were Royalists, the Church lost strength for a time; but when the Nation became independent, the Church also became independent. Largely the same men who framed the Constitution of the Nation framed the Constitution of the Church. Thus as we have in Congress the Senate and the House of Representatives, so in the General Convention we have the House of Bishops and the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies. As a Governor and a Legislature govern a State, so a Bishop and a Diocesan Convention govern a Diocese. A Diocese has a certain amount of self-direction, but it is also directed by the General Convention. Corresponding with the local township is the Parish governed by a Rector and a Vestry, who are elected in turn by the people of the parish. These same parishioners in parish meeting elect [or delegate their Vestry to elect for them] representatives to the Diocesan Convention. The Diocesan Convention made up of the Bishop, all the clergy of the Diocese, and the laymen thus elected from the parishes elects four clergymen and four laymen to represent the Diocese in the General Convention.

[Each Missionary District sends one clergy man and one layman.] Further, on all important matters the clergy and the laity vote separately. Nothing may be done from which a majority of the lay delegates in either Diocesan or General Convention dissent. The Bishops and clerical deputies in General Convention might vote unanimously for a certain change in the Constitution or in the Prayer Book, but unless a majority of the laymen voted for it there would be no change. The Bishops, more over, are constitutional rulers. Their rights and their duties are rigidly defined. They are servants of the people, and rule by influence and love rather than by any mechanical power vested in them. No Bishop, for example, may be out of his diocese for more than three months at a time without the formal consent of the Standing Committee of the Diocese. The Episcopal Church is a fundamentally democratic institution. The layman is forced to take responsibility, and his ample rights are clearly designated. Many are the times that the laity have saved the Church from hasty and unwise action.

And, again and again, laymen have been developed, through this responsibility, to become leaders in the thought and advancing life of the Church.

We may not speak with disparagement of others. Some have one virtue of the past, others have other virtues. But we may be thankful that our forbears preserved in our own Communion so many marks of the Apostolic Church, whereby we may say with thanksgiving that we have < continued in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ ii

How shall we test the catholicity of the Church? No single communion in a di vided Christendom may rightly lay claim that it alone is the Catholic Church. Even the Church of Rome prefixes the adjective Roman to its title [the Holy Roman Apostolic Church]. 1 The only defensible definition of the Holy Catholic Church is that it includes all persons baptized with water in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, to whatever communion of the Church these people may belong.

All cannot be right, perhaps none are wholly right; but we believe that the Lord of the Church receives them all as members of the Church Catholic. It remains for us to ask why we believe that our Communion, in its orders and ministry, is a true branch of the Holy Catholic Church. In our ordination service the Preface says, ’ It is evident unto all men diligently reading Holy Scriptures and Ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there

* In the declaration of 1928 concerning the unity of Christendom, the Pope speaks of his Church as the Apostolic Roman Church, not using the word Catholic at all. have been three Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.’ If we emphasize the word ’ from/ we find modern scholarship endorsing this statement. These orders were certainly established from the end of the first century. 1 To this statement, the Church of Rome adds the Pope of Rome, as a necessary officer of the Church. What we must discover, therefore, is whether the Pope has been always a necessary officer. A glance at Church history shows us that at the Council of Nicea in 325 the Bishops were evidently all equal. The Bishops of the great sees, such as Alexandria and Antioch, had naturally greater influence, which the Council itself recognized as just.

Eusebius of Cesarea, as the friend of the Emperor, had probably greatest influence of all The Bishop of Rome was not pre

1 The New Testament mentions all three orders, but it is not clear that they functioned together. For example, bishops and presbyters [later contracted to ’priests’] were assigned the same duties. Out of a number of ’orders* [1 Corinthians 12:28-30], the three permanent orders emerged in the beginning of the second century as witnessed by Ignatius [ad Magn. 2, 3]. Ignatius writes that these three orders, bishops, presbyters, and deacons, are in his day established. sent, but he would have had large power had he been there, because he was Bishop of the imperial city. With Constantine’s conversion, Christianity spread so rapidly that the organization of the Church be came more elaborate; and Bishops of certain chief cities became Archbishops, Patriarchs, or Popes. Thus there came to be Patriarchs, or Popes, in Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Carthage, Milan, Rome, and other places. Within the next few centuries two catastrophes tended to strengthen the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The first was the Barbarian Invasion from the North. To the ancestors of these barbarians former Bishops of Rome had sent missionaries, so that when the old civilization yielded to the new, the conquerors had respect only for the Church as represented in the Pope. The Barbarian Invasion vastly strengthened his authority. Meantime, in the seventh century, the Mohammedan Invasion so overwhelmed the Eastern part of the Church, that the Popes of most of the Provinces were reduced nearly to nothing. By the weakening of all the Eastern patriarchates, the advantages accruing to the Roman Patriarch by reason of the Barbarian Invasion were largely increased by the Mohammedan Invasion.

Gregory the Great [590-604], assuming of necessity, because of the destitution of Italy, functions of civil authority, became a powerful secular prince, and so may be called the founder of the temporal power of the Papacy. On Christmas Day 800 the barbarian Emperor Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope of Rome. This power of the Pope was a gradually growing power; and at this time, and for several centuries after, the leadership of the Pope was of great benefit to a distracted Church.

We may rightly thank God for it. From 857 to 1453 the breaking asunder of the Greek and the Latin Churches was accomplished. Beginning with misunderstandings, passing into avowed doctrinal divergence, the final decisive separation came after six hundred years of vain efforts at reunion. The almost solitary point of doctrinal difference was the change of the Nicene Creed by the Latin Church by which the West said that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, while the East still maintains the ancient declaration that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father. The Greeks found the real difficulty, however, in the papal claims to the primacy. The oldest Apostolic sees, Jerusalem and Antioch, refused to bow to the sole claim of Rome.

Quite apart from the rejection of the papal claims by the oldest part of Christendom, the chief difficulty with the Papacy was that its spiritual service was sometimes lost in its political mastery. The Pope was steadily ceasing to be a servant of men, and tended to become their lord. [This tendency is a danger in the ministry of all communions.] Because the office became worldly, worldly (even wicked) men sought and won it. Alexander VI, a Borgia, was perhaps the most wicked; Leo X, a member of the Medici family, was perhaps the most worldly. The Popes were sometimes thieves and not shepherds. The good men in the Church of Rome mourned this fact, and reformed these conditions in the Council of Trent.

Therefore, with all other parts of Western Christendom, the Church which remained in communion with the Pope was reformed in the sixteenth century. The decrees of the Council of Trent were the symbol of the Reformation as much as the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, and the Thirty-Nine Articles were symbols of it. History, however, proves that the Church in communion with Rome was not Catholic in insisting that the Pope is a necessary officer of the Church; for the Pope cannot trace his pedigree from the beginning. James, and not. Peter, was the first Bishop of Jerusalem, which was the mother of all the Churches. The statement of the Preface to the Ordinal that ’from the Apostles’ time there have been these orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church Bishops, Priests, and Deacons ’ has been fully proved. With out judging others who have more or less, we are on firm ground when we say that in preserving unbroken our continuity with a ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, from the days of the Apostles, we are true to the Catholic heritage. We have a ministry which has continued through all Christian history, and which in most of this time has been the one ministry recognized by the whole Church; and, even in the last four hundred years, this has been the ministry of about nine tenths of Christians throughout the world.

III That the Church may be holy, it must put forth the character of its members as the most important evidence of its validity.

Jesus Christ said, * By their fruits ye shall know them/ Whenever any branch of the Church produces liars, murderers, thieves, and adulterers, that branch shows itself far below the evils of heresy or schism. That branch ceases to be part of the true vine.

Henceforth it is fit only to be cast out and to be burned. No orthodoxy of doctrine or regularity of ministry can save it. On the other hand, when we discover a group of Christians without many of the formal credentials of the Church, but with such patience, self-sacrifice, purity, and love, that one is constantly reminded of the Saviour Himself, then we know that these people are in a class with Saint Paul, who entered into the highest gifts of the Church without the outward forms counted necessary for others.

There is beauty and truth in the theory of Apostolic Succession; that is, the continuity of the Christian Ministry. But there is more truth and more beauty in the succession of Christ-filled men, laymen as well as clergy. For often the lay people are greater saints, I suspect, than their clerical brethren. Monica, for example, was, I am sure, of more exalted character than her son, even after he had abandoned his evil past and had won full right to his title as Saint Augustine. Christ the Lord, living in men and women from generation to generation, is His own witness. It was not only the ordained men of the first centuries who were willing to die rather than deny the resurrection of Christ; the succession of witnesses was often in whole households of lay folk, where devout parents told, with shining eyes, to their children what their noble parents in their time had told to them. It is transparent goodness, learned from Christ Himself, which proclaims the power of the Christian Church.

IV The final note of the Church is that it is one. The effort of Christ-filled men to attain unity in Christ’s Church is in sympathy with the Lord’s own prayer that all who follow Him should be one, as He is one with His Father. Our own communion stands in a place of marked responsibility, for we share with the communions which call themselves Catholic the Apostolic Ministry, and with the communions which call themselves Protestant the Apostolic teaching, the measuring of our doctrine by the standards of the New Testament. We have in our own corporate life all the varieties of temperament which are found in the communions about us, which, because of the same differences, believe that they must live apart. We exult in our differences of high and low and broad churchmanship, because we prove to ourselves that our Communion is generous and comprehensive, eager to include all who love the Lord Jesus, and exceedingly loath to shut any out.

Beyond this, we have put forth a basis of reunion which would be satisfactory to us. This basis was first suggested by Dr. William Reed Huntington in his ’ Church Idea’; was then adopted by the General Convention at Chicago in 1886; and in 1888 was affirmed by the Lambeth Conference of all the bishops of the Anglican Communion. It is called the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, and is as follows,

I The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as ’containing all things necessary to salvation/ and as being the rule and ultimate standard of Faith.

II The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.

Ill The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.

IV The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church. In 1927, five hundred delegates from nearly all Communions in Christendom met in Lausanne to confer together on the Faith and Order of the Church, and to prepare the way, if possible, for definite action towards unity by the governing bodies of the Church throughout the world. The temper of those who truly hungered for unity was evident by their humility and by their word that they prayed God to take from them all preconceived notions of how unity might come and to use them in His way to bring unity to pass, even if they must sacrifice what hitherto they had thought essential. There were natural cries that this was treason to fixed principles as if the Lord Himself could not be trusted to define what is essential!

Meantime, great experiments were being tried in Canada, where the United Church of Canada unites most of the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists; and also in South India, where the Church of England is waiving ordination by bishops in Communions with which it joins provided that fifty years hence all ministers of the United Church receive Episcopal ordination. In our Communion in America we have a Canon providing for the ordination of ministers of congregations outside our Communion if they and their congregations will conform to certain conditions, those ministers then being counted regularly ordained to minister to their present flocks and to our own communicants. Such practical efforts do not go far, but they are an earnest of greater things to come, and a warning that we cannot be content much longer to speak merely fair words, but must begin to act, trusting ourselves entirely to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Meantime, there is a growing respect and a deepening of brotherly love from one group to another. The Church, more and more filled with the daring and the love of its Master, is less sure of its own wisdom, and is opening its mind and its heart wider and wider to the directing power of the Lord of the Church.

During the war a French cure was put in charge of an American wounded soldier, who was a Protestant. Day after day the loving cure ministered to the youth, and grew more and more devoted to him. The people of the parish knew what this foreign soldier had become to their pastor, and when the young American died the whole flock gathered with their leader to mingle their tears with his in the open grave. The grave had been dug in the garden just as close to the wall dividing the garden from God’s acre as was possible. In the morning after the funeral, when the cure’s friends came to visit the grave, they found that loving hands had pulled down the wall which separated the American Protestant’s grave from the consecrated ground. The love of the cure could not endure that his dear friend should be separated from him in the fulness of his Christian hope. All this is a symbol of the growing desire for genuine unity. When all men love one another as Christ loves each one of them, the heart of the Church will no longer hesitate, and God will show them how to be one.