Quaker Theology #9 -- Fall-Winter 2003
The Church: Called, Gathered, and Faithful -- continued -- 3
(13) On the controverted questions posed by the comments on "The Church and Sin" (par. 41), we may once again offer a mediating formula. Friends would agree that the Church cannot sin when by "the Church" we mean not any human structure but the gathering of all faithful persons throughout history, the "invisible church" of which we (like our Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting) have written above. The Church is indeed the "gift of God," but only in this sense. The particular institutional arrangements which we establish on earth are the Church only insofar as they are gatherings of faithful Christians waiting upon the Lord and responding faithfully to divine guidance as it is given us. The Church cannot sin, but these human institutions may be sinful and may commit sin as institutions because they can and do turn away from communion with God and act contrary to the divine will. When they do so, they are simply no longer the visible Church but rather in a state of apostasy, for which God constantly offers forgiveness and redemption but likewise demands repentance. This apostasy is a real possibility not only for the fallible individuals who make up institutions, but for institutions themselves. This is as true of our own Quaker institutions as it is of other religious societies. No human institution can claim to be free of sin; nor can any human institution claim that it can guarantee that it will always, at every moment of its existence, be faithfully and authentically the Church.
(14) On the controverted question of church as sacrament (par. 47), we note that the claim that the church is sacrament is not in common use among us, but neither is it antithetical to our understanding of either church or sacrament. All reality may be sacramental in that God may choose any means of communicating the divine life and presence to human beings. Because we testify to God’s sacramental power pervading all our experience, we cannot object to sacramental language about the Church so long as it is understood that the Church is not in any way necessarily or categorically sacramental. It is sacramental only when and as God chooses to use it as a means of communion with us. This is the same caution voiced above with regard to the outward sacraments.
(15) We approve with enthusiasm the "visible and tangible signs of the new life of communion" that may be shared between Christian societies, and we continue to be glad to participate in these. We note, however, that "breaking and sharing the eucharistic bread" is not a possibility for koinonia with other churches. This is true in part on theological grounds. However, most churches admit as communicants only those who have been baptized with water. Thus many Friends may be ineligible to be communicants in other Christian bodies. For those bodies which would require baptism more broadly understood, participation of Friends in communion might be possible.
(16) We note with a little concern the remark in the introduction to controverted questions on the eucharist after par. 80: "It is a matter of continuing concern among all Christians that not all Christians share together in the Holy Communion." The troublesome word is the first all. We note with gratitude the recognition after par. 77 in the section on controverted questions regarding water baptism that not all communities practice it. A similar acknowledgement concerning the eucharist would address communities such as ours which do not outwardly practice the Lord’s Supper.
(17) We find the question about the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary to be theologically compelling. While there is diversity among Friends concerning the precise nature of Christ’s sacrifice, Friends United Meeting insists on the salvific centrality of that historic sacrifice. On the other hand, Quakers have confessed from the earliest days that Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross and with it his resurrection is without effect if it is not repeated in the heart of each believer in the crucifixion of the fleshly will in rebellion against God and the resurrection of the soul to new life in God. In this sense, our understanding has some affinity with the Roman Catholic insistence that the eucharist repeats the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, for we believe that the context of this repetition of his sacrifice inwardly in us is the gathered meeting covered by the presence of the Holy Spirit. This experience is precisely what we mean by communion, and precisely what we hope is effected in other churches by their experience of eucharist.
(18) Friends differ from many Christian bodies on the question of the ordained ministry, and here we have a great affinity with other Believers’ Church traditions. We appreciate the document’s affirmation that "Jesus Christ is the unique priest of the new covenant (Heb 9:10)" (par. 83). Quakers would not deny the priesthood of all believers, but from the earliest times have testified that Christ is present among us as our bishop to oversee us, our priest to intercede for us with God, our prophet to guide us, and our king to govern us. We are therefore unable to unite with theories of priestly apostolic succession. It is our belief that persons are chosen among us by God to exercise a gift in ministry on particular occasions; we make no requirement that such ministry, which includes speaking prophetically in our meetings for worship, be exercised only by persons who hold an professional office or appointment in the church. Nor do we expect that persons with a particular gift in ministry must show evidence of many or all the other gifts in ministry in order to minister among us, and Friends have traditionally resisted the notion of a single minister competent to exercise most or all the apostolic gifts of ministry in a community. Even though a majority of meetings in FUM now employ a pastor, all Friends insist on being open to the gifts in ministry with which God endows other members, whether for a season or persistently through their lives. We do not use the language of priesthood to name the exercise of these gifts, and cannot see our way forward to do so. At the same time, we rejoice in the gifts in ministry with which God endows members of the larger body of Christians, even where we may differ in theology and practice.
(19) We believe firmly that no church can make a minister. God alone makes ministers by graciously endowing some members of the church with the gifts in ministry enumerated in Scripture. However, when a person has exercised a gift frequently and over a period of time, Friends may choose to record that gift. Doings so signals our recognition of the gift, our desire to nurture it, our desire to establish a relationship of accountability for the minister who exercises his or her gift, and to register our confidence that the minister speaks not only for herself or himself, but for the community of Friends. Friends may choose to rescind this recording for various reasons, or God may choose to withdraw the gift; but we are clear that these are two different processes. We are also clear that a person called by a meeting to be a pastor need not be a recorded minister, since such a person may not yet have been properly seasoned in the exercise of the gift, and Friends may not have had sufficient time to discern whether we are called by God to record the ministering Friend’s gift.
(20) A substantial minority among us would take a more traditionally Quaker stance on the exercise of ministry. Many meetings decline to employ paid pastors at all because of traditional Quaker opposition to preaching the Gospel in exchange for pay. Because of abuses in the past, some of these Friends no longer record ministers, though they continue to search for ways to recognize, nurture, and hold accountable gifts in ministry with which God endows Friends. Nonetheless we are happy to recognize that ordination in other denominations may constitute a church’s recognition, based on evidence and communal discernment, that God has endowed a member with apostolic gifts.
(21) All Friends would be united in expressing reservations about the notion of apostolic succession as it is understood in episcopal traditions. We are not able to accept the notion that a lineage of ordination could automatically communicate the teaching authority of the Holy Spirit or the right to speak in Christ’s name. The church is apostolic only insofar is its members encounter Christ, accept his offer of grace and redemption, seek to follow him, and share the good news with others as did his apostles. Friends insist that Christ is come to teach his people himself, and through his Spirit he encounters us just as he did his apostles. The same Spirit of Christ which gave forth the scriptures is alive and active among Christians now, and we are apostolic when we are transformed by that Spirit. That apostolic character cannot be lodged in any office or restricted by any sacramental conferral of authority, but only resides in the church’s faithful following of Jesus and building the kingdom of God.
(22) For this reason, we would make a clear distinction between the apostolic character of the church and the ministry of oversight (episkopé ). There is much in the document’s understanding of oversight that we can affirm. Among us, those so gifted are appointed as elders to recognize, nurture, and maintain accountability for those with gifts in ministry, and overseers to care for the material needs of the community and its needs for counsel and support. Often the offices of elder and overseer are combined or maintained under other names but still carry out the functions of episkopé. Further, our meetings gather as "Monthly Meetings" and "Yearly Meetings" to exercise what the document calls "collegial episkopé". Traditionally, our meetings at these levels consider ordinary and extraordinary business and try to discern at each moment where the Spirit of Christ is leading us. We do not act until we are in unity to do so; we neither locate decision making authority in a single individual nor in a representative body (synod), nor in the votes of a majority. These structures characterize both our local congregational government and our collegial work of "hold[ing] the local congregations in communion, to safeguard and hand on apostolic truth, to give mutual support, to lead in witnessing to the Gospel" (par. 91). The document’s description of the "ministry of discernment" and the sensus fidei (par. 99) is a faithful account of our practice of decision-making by unity (which we call "the sense of the meeting"), and we unite with this as an understanding of oversight in the church. The sometimes long and difficult process of sharing and listening in prayerful discernment is often an effective means of "preventing premature closure of debate" (par. 106). Collegial oversight in this sense does not only "help the Church to live in communion while the mind of Christ is being discerned" (par. 106), but is a process in which this sense of communion is experienced. Our communal decision making happens traditionally in a meeting for worship with special attention to decision making. At its best, this is precisely the same kind of activity of communion with Christ that we experience in our ordinary meetings for worship, whose purpose is also to help us discern individually and corporately how Christ is calling us to act in our lives. There is no theoretical distinction, and ought to be little practical one, between our worship and our meetings for governance. We therefore unite fully with the sentiments of par. 106. It is therefore very difficult for us to imagine a form of church government where all members do not have a significant voice.
(23) Personal episcopacy is therefore an office with which we could not reconcile ourselves, much as we trust that God will provide gifted, discerning leaders in those churches that do govern themselves by personal episcopacy.
(24) From these reflections, and from our understanding that unity must not be confused with institutional merger, it follows that we can find no place for a ministry of "primacy at a world level." We further must distance ourselves from the belief that "a eucharist needs a president" (after par. 110), and on grounds more substantial than the fact that we do not observe the Lord’s Supper. While many of our meetings choose a person or person who exercise leadership in worship, that leadership is purely a function of the local community, is often temporary and circumstantial, and has no intrinsic connection with giftedness in ministry, nor oversight in church discipline, nor eldership, nor church governance. Our traditional forms of worship, still observed by many Friends, have no human leader appointed, even where there are recorded ministers in attendance. Preaching is, under such circumstances, exercised solely when the inward motion of the Holy Spirit is discerned. Even where we have an appointed pastor and an expected message, the point of the message is to communicate the leadings of the Holy Spirit as given to the minister, who is therefore not a presider but responding to the guidance of the living Christ among us. We insist that the "presidency" in our worship belongs to Christ alone, who is present as our priest to intercede for us, our bishop to oversee us, our prophet to speak to us, our Lord to govern us. None of those powers can be usurped by a human being or lodged in a church office. Consequently, the only eucharistic president we could affirm would be Christ himself, present and alive among us.