(For Parts 1 and 2 of my comments on The Davenant Trust’s Convivium
Irenicum 2016 go here and here.)
It was good to see Andre Gazal again. As best as we could recall,
we hadn’t seen each other since 1997 or 1998 in our Geneva School days. Andre presented his
work-in-progress titled “George Carleton’s Reformed Doctrine of Apostolic
Succession at the Synod of Dort.” I knew of the 1619 Synod of Dort from my days
in the Christian Reformed Church; it’s the one famously identified with the
so-called Five Points of Calvinism. I also generally recalled that Dort was an
international synod, one in which there were Reformed delegates from nations outside the
Dutch Republic. I was a blank slate, however, when it came to who those
delegates were and what influence they had.
Several of the non-Dutch delegates at Dort were from England who
attended at the direction of James I on behalf of the Church of England. And one
of the English delegates was George Carleton, then bishop of Llandaff in Wales.
James had carefully instructed the English delegates to remain firm in their
advocacy for distinctively Anglican teaching and practices, which included an episcopal
form of church government where bishops ruled. Thus, it should be of no
surprise that Carleton and the others came in for some strong criticism on
their return to England because the Synod had reaffirmed Article
31 of the Belgic Confession, which provided that the Reformed churches of
the Netherlands would have a Presbyterian form of church government in which
there were no bishops, and ministers and elders had equal ruling authority.
Two interesting points followed. First, Carleton protested that
the English delegates had vigorously pressed the Dutch to modify their church
order to provide for episcopacy and that the Hollanders claimed they wanted rule by bishops but that their
civil magistrates were unalterably opposed. Such an admission by the Dutch greatly
surprised me, especially when in Scotland it was the magistrate—James VI—who distrusted
a Presbyterian form of church government and in England—as James I—he liked
having bishops. In other words, if the English civil magistrate preferred episcopacy,
why wouldn’t the magistrates in the Netherlands likewise want it?
Second, and of more general interest, was Carleton’s rational for
episcopacy: only bishops could maintain a legitimate claim to authority via apostolic
succession. My notes regarding Carleton’s argument as relayed by Gazal are
sketchy but it went something like this: #1—Christ delegated to his apostles
governing authority over (i) doctrine (i.e., creation of Scripture) and (ii) the church
(guaranteeing correct teaching by ordaining clergy (presbyters) and, if necessary, removing them if they began to teach heresy);
#2—this two-fold authority is perpetual; #3—yet with the close of the canon, revelation
of doctrine (#1(i)) is complete; #4—someone (the apostles’ successors) had to have continuing
jurisdiction over the church (#1(ii)) since the need for godly teachers and the danger
of heresy remain; #5—the clergy couldn’t have jurisdiction over themselves;
thus, #6—only bishops today have that residual apostolic authority.
Whatever the substantive merits of Carleton’s rationale, it
suggests another question: Why don’t the bishops of the Church of Rome have
this residual apostolic authority? Because, Carleton argued, they forfeited that authority by wrongfully delegating it to the Pope. According to Christ's apostolic order the Church is to be governed
by a plurality of bishops, not a single “super-bishop,” and thus there had to be
a “reset” after the failure of the Conciliar Movement in the 15th century.
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