Friday 24th November 2006
Where do you stand in the Church of England’s ongoing debate about welcoming women to the episcopate? General Synod wants us all to discuss the issue widely before a decision is made.
To highlight some of the many strands of the debate the DOOR, over four issues, has invited people to state their case succinctly, as a starting point for discussion. This month we look at the theological arguments.
Let us know your views and questions by emailing the Editor of the DOOR or posting on our message board.
Bishops as
corporate persons
the Revd Mark Chapman
A good thing about the recent debates on women bishops is that it has stimulated thought on the nature of the episcopate in general. This was one of the best things about the Bishop of Rochester’s report ‘Women Bishops in the Church of England?’ (Church House Publishing, 2004). There is, after all, not much point in having women bishops if we don’t know what bishops are for.
Most theological thinking has looked at bishops as a focus for unity over time and in a particular place. But what is conspicuously lacking in most of the literature has been discussion of how episcopacy – the Greek word for oversight or superintendence – has actually been practised in the Church of England.
A careful study of Reformation history reveals that bishops were retained in England principally not on theological grounds, but because it was easier to ensure conformity through state-appointed officials!
But nowadays things have changed. With synodical government, bishops exercise their oversight only in conjunction with synods and colleagues. This corporate aspect of episcopacy has yet to be explored theologically. But it means that the continuity of the church with the church of the apostles is no longer expressed solely through one person, but through a collection of people and institutions – so, episcopacy as practised in the Church of England already embraces men and women. If that is the case then the bishop entrusted with the sacramental acts of ordaining and confirming on behalf of that Church is merely the first among equals – and could be man or woman.
Mark Chapman is vice-principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon and author of Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2006). See his essay ‘The Myths of Episcopacy’ in James Rigney (ed.), Women and the Episcopate (Affirming Catholicism, 2006).
Should we risk damaging the unity of the episcopate?
By the Revd Fr Jonathan Baker
What do Anglicans believe about the Church? That is the question we need to ask as we debate the possible ordination of women as bishops. Bishops are called to be those around whom priests and people gather, and who link together (through their relationships one with another) the whole church in one communion. Their special ministry is to be the focus of unity.
A divided episcopate – one in which the college of bishops was fractured – could not exercise that ministry of unity. The unity of the Church of England was put under strain when women were ordained to the presbyterate, but it was not broken. Ordaining women to the episcopate would widen, perhaps irreparably, the division between those who accept this new development, and those who, for sound theological reasons, cannot do so. Could our church accommodate this further division, without hampering our common witness to the nation?
What of our relationships with other churches? The historic episcopate, carefully conserved by the English Reformers, is one of the defining characteristics of Anglicanism which binds us into the life and mission of God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. The episcopate is not something which belongs to the Church of England alone. It is a gift which we have received from the Church universal, and which we share with our ecumenical partners who have also retained the apostolic ministry, and who constitute, overwhelmingly, the largest Christian communions worldwide.
Our bishops are, at present, a visible sign of the unity we share with those other Christian families and churches: a unity which is – regrettably – as yet incomplete. We owe it to ourselves not to make a move which would so decisively curtail that long and patient pilgrimage towards the visible unity of the whole Church for which Our Lord prayed.
The Revd Fr Jonathan Baker is principal of Pusey House, Oxford
The theologically significant point of the Incarnation is not that Jesus became man but that he became human – for ‘that which was not assumed cannot be saved’. But closing certain orders to women strains the credibility of that conviction, implying that men are, in some theologically significant way, more like Christ than women.
Christ became human,
not man
Harriet Harris
While this is never stated explicitly, it is promulgated in views that only men can represent Christ at the altar, and in teachings about male headship, in which it is believed that men as ministers, husbands, or fathers are called to exercise an authority analagous to the authority of God or Christ.
The former view focuses the representation of Christ at the Eucharist upon the priest, rather than upon the bread and wine, or upon the communicants who come together as the body of Christ. Headship concerns imply a kind of leadership which is not relevant to the role of bishops in the Church of England, whose authority is limited by synods and by the State.
Our current practice of ordaining a sub-set of deacons and priests, whom the Church cannot call to the ministry of bishop, fractures the historic three-fold pattern of ministry, and causes our ecumenical partners to look askance at our theology of ordination. We compromise the integrity of our Anglican orders. Other churches within the Anglican Communion, including those in Africa, have not made this mistake. They agreed to ordaining women as deacons, and simultaneously to ordaining women as priests and bishops.
Sometimes the Church is called to act before it can take everyone with it. Multiple instances in scripture and tradition show this to be the case, including taking the Gospel to the Gentiles, overriding the practice of circumcision, developing the office of bishop, and renouncing slavery. Would we suggest that the Church should have waited for a greater, unspecified degree of reception before acting on any of these convictions?
Harriet Harris is chaplain at Wadham College, Oxford and teaches Theology and Philosophy in the University of Oxford. She is author of Fundamentalism and Evangelicals (Oxford University Press).