Michael Liccione's dichotomy between church authority and private interpretation is, I think, essentially the same dilemma I posted elsewhere between sacramentally-grounded authority (SGA) and the individualism of doctrinally-grounded authority (DGA). Rick Phillips' response to Liccione fails as Liccione shows and as I have argued.

 

What is needed is a better Reformed response to this dilemma. Keith Mathison's attempt is better, but I think Mathison's position does not avoid this dilemma, as I showed here. The attempt (such as Mathison's) to endorse church authority as a way of avoiding the individualism of solo scriptura, while holding to a DGA conception of ecclesial authority, does not succeed because the position is ultimately no less individualistic than is the solo scriptura position.

 

But say that we take the sacramental side of that dilemma and grant that ecclesial authority is SGA. How then should we go about determining more precisely what constitutes SGA and picks out the identity of the true SGA? It seems to me that acknowledging that ecclesial authority is SGA affects even the way the question of the nature of sacramental authority should be answered. For if I acknowledge that ecclesial authority is SGA, then for every theological and ecclesial question (including questions regarding the nature of sacramental authority) I will be asking, "What does the SGA have to say about this?" And that forces me to seek out the identity of the SGA.

 

Can Presbyterians and those in the Reformed tradition justifiably claim to have SGA? Anglicans (and Catholics and Orthodox) hold that since one cannot give what one does not have, only those whose orders extend back to the Apostles can confer valid orders. Is there good reason to believe that the first Presbyterian elders were ordained by former Catholic priests and/or former Catholic bishops (or by those who were themselves ordained by former Catholic priests/bishops)? It seems to me that there is good reason to believe otherwise, given what we see in the early history of the Reformation. The *sacramental* character of ordination was strongly denied by Luther and by Calvin. So there was no reason for them to ensure that ordination was administered by validly ordained persons, since the very conception of ordination was not one of sacramentally *giving* to the person being ordained some spiritual grace by those who had themselves sacramentally received that spiritual grace. The Reformers did not deny that those called to serve the church in preaching and administering baptism and the Lord's Supper were equipped by God to do so. But they did not treat the laying on of hands as conferring the spiritual grace to do so. They turned "Apostolic succession" into *formal* agreement with [what they believed to be] the teaching of the Apostles, and in doing so they adopted the DGA conception of ecclesial authority. You can see this in a number of places in Calvin's Institutes, where he treats Apostolic succession as consisting in *doctrinal* and *practical* agreement with the Apostles. The term 'Apostolic' in the Nicene Creed's statement of the four marks of the Church did not merely mean doctrinal agreement with the Apostles; it also meant sacramental succession of holy orders from the Apostles. All the heretical sects of the first centuries (including the fourth century) claimed to be teaching the *doctrine* and *practice* of the Apostles. So 'apostolicity' construed as [the claim of] doctrinal and practical agreement with the Apostles was virtually worthless as a mark of the true Church. It is not that doctrinal agreement with the Apostles is worthless as a mark of the Church, but that the claim of doctrinal agreement, separated from sacramental succession, becomes worthless as a distinguishing mark of the Church. Apostolicity functions correctly as a distinguishing mark only when all three [doctrine, practice, and succession] are held together. This is not surprising, because these three are expressions of the prophetic, priestly, and royal roles of Christ, respectively.

 

Calvin reduces the marks of the Church to two: "Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists." (Institutes, IV.1.9) Who determines what counts as "purely preached" and what conforms to "Christ's institution"? The only possible answer is: each individual, because implicit in Calvin's formulation of the marks is the absence of sacramental authority. (Contrast that with St. Ignatius of Antioch's claim: "Where the bishop is, there is the Church.") Defining the marks of the Church in the way Calvin does implicitly removes SGA and replaces it with DGA. It replaces sacramental succession as the criterion of genuine magisterial authority with criteria from the prophetic and priestly roles (i.e. doctrine and liturgical practice). But that magisterial vacuum has to be filled, and in Protestantism the vacuum is necessarily filled by the individual, whether to himself alone, or if he is sufficiently persuasive and charismatic, to others also. This is why Luther and Calvin's replacement of SGA with DGA necessarily reduces to individualism.

 

Calvin writes elsewhere concerning Apostolic succession in the Catholic Church, "[T]his pretense of [Apostolic] succession is vain unless their descendants conserve safe and uncorrupted the truth of Christ which they have received at their fathers' hands, and abide in it." (Institutes IV.2.2) Who determines what is the "truth of Christ" and whether it is "safe" and "uncorrupted"? Again, without SGA, the answer must be: each individual. Luther does the same thing, removing SGA from the marks. He writes, "The sure mark by which the Christian congregation can be recognized is that the pure gospel is preached there." ("That a Christian Assembly or Congregation Has the Power to Judge All Teaching ,and to Call and Dismiss All Teachers, Established and Proven by Scripture"). And what counts as the "pure gospel" is up to each individual to decide.

 

If we redefined the term 'sacrament' so that matter is removed from its definition, then Protestants could claim that they have sacramental authority, but then what they mean by 'SGA' is equivalent to DGA. In other words, taking away the *matter* of SGA reduces it to DGA. Consider what Berkhoff says on page 588 of his Systematic Theology, in the section titled, "The officers' induction into office". Berkhoff, quoting Hodge, writes, "Ordination is the solemn expression of the judgment of the Church, by those appointed to deliver such judgment, that the candidate is truly called of God to take part in this ministry .... " The mere expression of a judgment, no matter how solemn, is not the administration of a sacrament. Even if hands are laid on during Presbyterian ordination, if what is intended is only the solemn expression of a judgment, then even if those ordaining had valid orders, what is occurring is not sacramental.

 

Berkhoff goes on in the section titled "Laying on of hands", and shows that the Presbyterian conception of ordination makes the laying on of hands "optional". He writes, "Ordination is accompanied with the laying on of hands. Clearly, the two [i.e. ordination and laying on of hands] went hand in hand in apostolic times .... In those early days the laying on of hands evidently implied two things: it signified that a person was set aside for a certain office, and that some special spiritual gift was conferred upon him. The Church of Rome is of the opinion that these two elements are still included in the laying on of hands, that it actually confers some spiritual grace upon the recipient, and therefore ascribes to it sacramental significance. Protestants maintain, however, that it is merely a symbolical indication of the fact that one is set aside for the ministerial office in the Church. While they [Protestants] regard it as a Scriptural rite and as one that is entirely appropriate, they do not regard it as absolutely essential. The Presbyterian Church makes it optional". (Berkhoff, p. 588)

 

I do not see how Protestant ordination can be claimed to be *sacramental* if the material principle is considered optional. And if that is how Presbyterians of the past treated ordination, how confident can one be now that Presbyterian orders extend back *sacramentally* in unbroken succession to the Apostles? Calvin's treatment of ordination (Institutes IV.3.10-16) is not any more sacramental than Berkhoff's. In Calvin, ordination seems to be reduced to calling. There is an inward call (which is entirely non-sacramental), and there is an external call, which is also merely ceremonial and symbolic, "useful for the dignity of the ministry" by showing the people that the person ordained is set aside by the Church for pastoral ministry. (Institutes IV.3.16) Calvin, like Berkhoff, acknowledges that in the time of the Apostles the laying on of hands by the Apostles "conferred the visible graces of the Spirit" (IV.3.16) But his next word is "Anyway ... ", implying that we don't have to concern ourselves with *that* anymore, because the conferral of such graces by that means ended with the Apostles.

 

Surely there is an *historical* line that can be traced back from contemporary Presbyterians to the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation, and then back to the Apostles. But that is quite different, it seems to me, from the notion that there is an unbroken *sacramental* succession of holy orders from contemporary Presbyterians to the Apostles. I do not see the justification for such a notion, particularly when Protestants (including Presbyterians) have since the 16th century denied the sacramental nature of ordination. Given Calvin's treatment of Apostolic succession, all that is needed for Apostolic succession is to pick up a Bible today and start preaching the pure Word and rightly administering baptism and the Lord's Supper. No organic connection to any of the intervening 2000 years is necessary. But it seems very clear to me that that is not at all what was historically meant by "Apostolic succession". The organic nature of the mystical body of Christ makes not only historical but also sacramental continuity absolutely essential. In treating Apostolic succession in the way that they did, it seems to me that Luther and Calvin (and the other Reformers) 'gnosticized' ordination. Likewise the merely ceremonial view of ordination described by Calvin and Berkhoff seems quite distinct from the Church's traditional sacramental notion of ordination, the one found both in the Scriptures and the fathers.

 

It seems to me that what governs Calvin and Berkhoff's theology is an a priori commitment to 'sola scriptura', and intrinsic to that conception of 'sola scriptura' is a rejection of SGA. This is, in my opinion, the crux of the Protestant-Catholic (or Catholic-Protestant) paradigm shift, not 'sola scriptura' per se, but the implicit rejection of SGA in the conception of 'sola scriptura'. If I acknowledge that there is a SGA, then my theology and ecclesiology and interpretation of Scripture must be subordinate to the SGA's. That does not mean that I must think that the SGA is right about everything it might say or do, but it does mean that I cannot justify schism from the SGA. If, however, I deny that there is a SGA, then if there is an SGA I will nevertheless treat it as subordinate in authority to my own interpretation of Scripture.