Visible Unity and the Ministry of Oversight: The Second Theological Conference held under the Meissen Agreement between the Church of England and the Evangelical Church in Germany

Visible Unity and the Ministry of Oversight: The Second Theological Conference held under the Meissen Agreement between the Church of England and the Evangelical Church in Germany. London: Church House Publishing, 1997. xi + 367 pp. 29.95.

The historic Meissen Declaration (1991), signed between the Church of England and the German Protestant churches, recorded an agreement on the goal of church unity as well as ten points of agreement in faith, although it also registered a "remaining difference" over the question of episcopal succession. One happy outcome of this agreement is that it has stimulated impressive and significant theological conferences in its train, of which this volume represents the proceedings of the second. The first, held in 1995, considered issues that had been raised during the process of approval of the declaration by the German churches, especially questions concerning the Eucharist, and it concluded that sufficient eucharistic agreement exists between the churches involved to justify a decision to enter eucharistic koinonia. Now this second conference has taken up the question of episcopacy, in terms of history, theology, liturgy, law, experience, and current practice, and these are its results. The papers delivered originally in German are included here in their German originals (147 pages of the total), but they are also given in complete and competent English translation. No name of an editor of this book is given, although it is described as copyrighted by Ingolf Dalferth and Rupert Hoare and the Foreword is signed by the Co-Chairmen of the Meissen Commission, Bishops Hans Christian Knuth and Michael Bourke. The names of the individual authors and participants are all listed, but there is a failure to identify any of them except the bishops.

In the official conference report, printed at the first of this volume, it was agreed that there are "no short or easy answers," although "real progress" was made in understanding and appreciating each other. The conference agreed that, the continuity of the Gospel always taking priority, there is also in both churches "an unbroken continuity of authorized ordination of ministers," although at the time of the Reformation the continental reformers had to choose a continuity of the Gospel over the existing episcopate whereas in England continuity was maintained in both. The report also sets forth an agenda for future theological work, and concludes that there are probably no objections from the German side to unrestricted interchange of ministries now but that a number of obstacles (listed) do exist from the English side.

The papers in the volume range back and forth on various topics related to the ministry of oversight, especially of bishops, with parallel Anglican and Evangelical papers that usually complement each other. Of particular note are the following. Dorothea Wendebourg shows lucidly the way in which the office of bishop in the German protestant churches today is the particular and peculiar legacy of the German Reformation, explaining how it came about in those lands that "no bishop of the Empire was won for the Reformation together with his episcopal see" (p. 57).

From the Anglican side, John Findon helpfully distinguishes four different views about episcopacy held within the Church of England between 1559 and 1689. In ascending order he cites: Whitgift and Hooker (the adiaphorist view, believing that although no form of church order was prescribed in Scripture yet the episcopal pattern was commended in it), Bancroft (divine right, but not divinely prescribed as necessary in every situation), Laud (divine right, proven by history to be God's will for the church), and Dodwell (the channel of sacramental grace necessary for salvation). He questions whether the first and last of these views "can readily be accommodated within Anglicanism" (p. 90). Noting the increasing tendency in the seventeenth century to believe that the mere piling up of historical precedents could settle ecclesiastical disputes, he observes that Laud himself had defended for his D.D. at Oxford the thesis that episcopacy was a distinct order in the church.

As if to illustrate the doctrinal diversity of Anglicanism, there later follows another Anglican essay by Bishop Colin Buchanan, the noted liturgiologist of evangelical persuasion, who (reviewing Anglican ordination rites) goes on to claim as his own the very first of Findon's four categories: "I would have to count myself an adiaphorist, and the highest contention I can make for the episcopal system of the Church of England is that it is of the bene esse (perhaps even the optime esse) of the church, and certainly not of the esse and therefore not de fide" (p. 122). Here is much food for thought, food that could help to convince the American Lutherans, if they could read these papers, that Anglican views on episcopacy are not as monochromatic or triumphalist as some of them have thought!

One may dare to hope, if a Lutheran-Episcopal concordat for full communion is ever passed in the U.S.A., that one of its by-products will be the impetus for a theological conference, a program of essays, a book, as ecumenically useful and promising as this volume.