EPISCOPACY.
I. The Roman Catholic Church. II. The Eastern Church. III. The Jansenist Church of Holland and the Old Catholics. IV The Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal
Church. V. The Reformed Episcopal Church. VI. The Moravian Church. VII. The Lutheran Churches. VIII. The Reformed Churches. IX. The American Methodist Episcopal Churches. X. The Historic Episcopate.
Episcopacy is church government by bishops. The purpose of this article is to give a concise statement of the views concerning the episcopal office held by different Christian communions; for the origin of the office, its historic development, and theories of its relative dignity, see Polity, Ecclesiastical; for the selection of bishops and their duties, see Bishop; see also the articles upon the several bodies named below.
I. The Roman Catholic Church holds to the divine origin and authority of episcopacy. Its position was distinctly defined by the Council of Trent: " If any one saith that in the Catholic Church there is not a hierarchy by divine ordination instituted, consisting of bishops, priests and ministers; let him be anathema. If any one saith that bishops are not superior to priests or
that the power which they possess is common to
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Epiphany- Episcopacy
them and to priests let him be anathema "
(session xxiii. 6, 7). Episcopacy is held as essential to the Church as the sacraments; the Church can not exist without it. The words of Cyprian (Epist, lxviii. [lxvi., lxix.] 8, ANF, v. 374-375), " the Church is in the bishop," present this view concisely. The bishops are the immediate successors of the apostles, — " all chief rulers by vicarious ordination succeed to the apostles " (Cyprian, ut sup., 4, ANF, v. 373). Another view was quite prevalent in the Middle Ages, viz., that all bishops are successors of St. Peter and stand in his stead (" the leaders of the Church, who hold the place of Peter," Robert Grosseteste, Epist., xxiii., ed. Luard, Rolls Series, no. 25), a view held also by the Church Fathers. It is a matter of uncertainty whether the bishops are an order distinct from the priests or not (cf. Friedberg, Kirchenrecht, p. 150). They are certainly superior to priests and deacons not merely in jurisdiction but in the kind of grace they possess. In their consecration a special grace is imparted and they alone have the right to ordain and thus confer an indelible grace. Thomas Aquinas again and again affirms that the episcopate is not a distinct order and that consecration to it has not a sacramental character (cf. Sententice, IV. xxiv. 3; Summa, Supp., xi. 5, ed. Migne, iv. 1074). The Council of Trent speaks of the " hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons " but its language is susceptible of a twofold interpretation, for it classes subdeacons with the ordines majores (session xxiii. 2). Innocent III. (1198-1216) included the subdeacon in the ordines majores. If the subdiaconate be an order by itself then the bishop belongs to the order of the priesthood and is not a distinct order.
The pope is at the head of the hierarchy of bishops and, as the immediate successor of Peter, all bishops are subject to him as the vicar of Christ and the successor of the divinely appointed head of the apostles. The confirmation of bishops by the pope was made a fixed rule by Nicholas III (1277-80). The theory that the bishops are assistants of the pope was definitely stated by Innocent III. Quoting Leo I. (Epist., vi., MPL, liv. 671) he declared that they receive their authority to assist the pope and not as having " plenitude of power " (cf. Dollinger-Friedrich, Papstthum, Munich, 1892, pp. 73, 409). This theory was advocated by the papal publicists in the early half of the fourteenth century and opposed by the antipapal publicists of the same age, such as Pierre Dubois, and by Gerson and other Gallican leaders in the fifteenth century. This view of Innocent III. seriously limits the prerogative of the bishops and enables the pope to depose them and makes their resignation valid only when accepted by him. The Vatican Decrees (iv. 3; Schaff, Creeds, ii. 262 sqq.) order obedience to the pope by " all pastors " in " all matters that belong to faith and morals and also in those that pertain to the government and discipline of the Church," and also assert " that their episcopal authority is really strengthened and protected by the supreme and universal Pastor." The struggle over the Gallican and Ultramontane theories of the jurisdiction and
original authority of the episcopate was theoretically brought to a close by the decision of the Vatican Council.
II. The Eastern Church holds likewise to the divine origin of episcopacy, to the transmission of apostolic grace, and to apostolic succession. It dissents from the Latin Church in refusing to recognize the pope as the spiritual head of all Christendom, but is ready to acknowledge him as the patriarch of Western Christendom, occupying an equal dignity with the four historic patriarchs of the East, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
III. The Jansenist Church of Holland and the Old Catholics both agree with the Roman Catholic Church on the question of the divine authority of episcopacy, but differ from it in holding the Gallican theory of the episcopate, i.e., they deny to the pope anything more than an appellate and supervisory jurisdiction over the Church, hold that he may err, and that ecumenical councils are superior to him in authority. The episcopate of the Dutch Jansenists was received in 1724 from Dominique Marie Varlet, Bishop of Babylon, then living in Amsterdam. Other Roman Catholic bishops, on being applied to, refused the rite of consecration. Each new consecration ever since has been noticed by a special excommunication from Rome. The Old Catholics secured their orders from the Jansenists of Holland, the bishop of Deventer consecrating Bishop Reinkens (Aug. 11, 1873), who subsequently consecrated Dr. Herzog bishop for Switzerland (Sept. 18, 1876), so that they preserved the apostolic succession.
IV. The Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States tolerate two classes of opinion, — the Anglo-Catholic or High-church view, and the Low- or Broad-church view. (1) The Anglo-Catholic view of the episcopate is in essential particulars that of the Roman Catholic Church. It does not recognize the superior authority of the pope, as the vicar of Christ and the infallible successor of St. Peter, nor even place ordination among the sacraments. But it regards episcopacy as indispensable to the very being of the Church, holds to the transmission of grace by the imposition of hands, accepts apostolic succession, and denies validity to any ministry not ordained by bishops. Bishops " as being the successors of the apostles are possessed of the same power of jurisdiction " (J. H. Blunt, Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology, p. 85, London, 1870). They are, and have been from the time of the apostles, an order distinct from the priesthood and diaconate and higher than both. As late as 1618 the highest authority in the Church of England, James I., recognized the ordination of the Reformed Churches of the Continent when he sent a delegation made up in part of bishops to the Synod of Dort. Archbishop Laud (1633-45) was the most extreme representative of the jure divino right of episcopacy the Church of England has had, and his intolerance brought him to the block. (2) The Low- and Broad-church view regards the episcopate as desirable and necessary for the wellbeing, not to the being, of the Church. The episcopal
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