Ecclesiastical Polity and the Validity of Holy Orders

In the episcopal understanding the succession is physical. A bishop is consecrated by the laying on of hands by other bishops, customarily three, each of whom was consecrated the same way, and the chain is understood to run back to the apostles. That is why episcopal churches keep consecration records with the care other institutions keep title deeds, and why the identity of the consecrating bishops is recorded rather than only the fact of the consecration.

Two distinctions do a great deal of work here. Validity concerns whether the act was effective; liceity concerns whether it was permitted. An ordination performed irregularly, in defiance of church law, may be illicit and still valid, which is how episcopal churches can recognise the orders of bodies they are not in communion with, and it is why bishops who ordain without authorisation are disciplined rather than treated as having done nothing.

The clearest modern case is the Roman judgement on Anglican orders. Rome recognises Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox orders without qualification. In the bull Apostolicae Curae of 1896 it declared Anglican ordinations null, on the ground that the Edwardine ordinal had a defect of form and of intention, and the archbishops of Canterbury and York replied the following year in Saepius Officio, disputing both grounds and observing that the same reasoning would invalidate several ancient rites. Neither side has moved, and the ecumenical conversations since have worked around the question rather than through it.

The presbyterian argument rests on a philological observation that is not really disputed. In the letter to Titus, Paul instructs that elders be appointed in every town and then, in the next sentence, gives the qualifications of an overseer, using the two words of the same people. In Acts the elders of Ephesus are summoned and then told that the Spirit has made them overseers of the flock. The letter to the Philippians greets overseers and deacons with no third order between them. On the face of the texts, episkopos and presbyteros name one office.

A threefold order appears clearly in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, from the early second century, where one bishop stands above a council of presbyters and a body of deacons and nothing is to be done without him. Episcopal churches read that as the apostolic arrangement coming into focus; Reformed churches read it as a development, and hold that ordination by a plurality of presbyters is therefore sufficient and that a bishop is a presbyter with a wider charge rather than a distinct order.

The congregational position moves the question again. If the church is the gathered congregation, then recognising a person gifts and calling belongs to that congregation, and ordination is confirmation rather than the conferral of a character. Modern agreements between churches have generally proceeded by mutual recognition of ministries rather than by settling the argument, with the Porvoo agreement and Called to Common Mission each finding a way for churches with and without the historic episcopate to accept one another ministers.