Take Thou Authority: Apostolic Succession in the Wesleyan Tradition

John Wesley preaching on his fathers grave: in the church yard at Epworth Sunday June 6th 1742 (Source: WikiCommons)

One of the charges given at the ordination of a presbyter in a Methodist ordination service, following the ordinal in Wesley’s Sunday Service for the Methodists in North America, exhorts the presbyter (or “Elder” in the Sunday Service), “Take thou authority to preach the Word of God, and to administer the holy Sacraments in the Congregation” (Sunday Service, 295). That authority ultimately flows from Jesus Christ himself, but numerous passages in the New Testament point to the apostles’ links to Jesus’ incarnate ministry as justification for their writing. For example, the apostle John declares his purpose, “we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3 NRSV). The syllogism is clear: if John has fellowship with the Father and his Son, and you have fellowship with John, then you have fellowship with the Father and the Son. The apostolic tradition’s purpose was to connect people with God, but its spiritual authority came from the apostles’ connection to Jesus. It was not just the apostles’ message that drew people, but also what the apostles represented. They had seen Jesus, had eaten dinner with him, had watched as he died—and been witnesses to his resurrection. As a whole, the early Church wanted the connection to Jesus that the apostles and their writings provided. That was the authority upon which they wanted to rest.

But the issue of authority also raises the question about who has authority within smaller, visible church organizations (whether independent congregations or denominations and ministry networks). Andrew Thompson argued in a previous Firebrand article that an “evangelical interpretation” of apostolic succession was consistent with Methodism, where, as Anglican bishop John Jewel wrote in his Apologie of the Church of England, a true preacher in apostolic succession was one who “doth the part of an Evangelist, that he fulfilleth the work and ministry of Christ.” But is the message itself enough to grant authority to order the life of a church? Early Methodist leaders were mostly lay preachers, who preached the true apostolic message, but few of them were ordained. In Bishop Jewel’s case, his polemic was against Roman Catholic bishops who claimed that their connection to the pope made them, rather than Protestants, the true successors of the apostles. Anglican bishops still retained episcopal offices, but Jewel’s Apologie argued that to be a true successor of the apostles meant preaching the true apostolic message, not simply holding an episcopal office. The office and the message went together.

There has never likely been a complete consensus on the issue of what Thompson calls a “liturgical interpretation” of apostolic succession. Even in the first few centuries, evidence shows that ordination practices differed across the ancient world. Hippolytus’s Apostolic Tradition in the third century argues for a clerical pedigree passed down by one bishop laying hands on another bishop. But Jerome observes that even in the fourth century, it was common practice in the Patriarchate of Alexandria (in modern-day Egypt) for presbyters to elect and consecrate a bishop from among their own number. John Wesley did not attempt to defend his actions in consecrating Thomas Coke, a fellow Anglican presbyter, as a “superintendent” for the Methodists in North America by saying that anyone who proclaimed the true gospel was able to confer valid holy orders. (“Superintendent” was Wesley’s preferred term, though the word is a synonym for overseer and thus “bishop.”) Instead, he argued that the New Testament pattern was of two orders, presbyters (one could perhaps call them presbyter-bishops) and deacons. What is not often discussed is that John Wesley was not the only Anglican presbyter who participated in the consecration of Coke: James Creighton was also present and assisted Wesley with consecrating Coke as superintendent/bishop. The three (Wesley, Creighton, and Coke) also ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as deacons, then presbyters, with orders to ordain and consecrate Francis Asbury as a second superintendent for the American Methodists once they arrived in the United States. 

Vasey would later leave the American Methodists and be ordained by Bishop William White of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States as an Episcopalian presbyter, reflecting concerns that Vasey and several other early American Methodist clergy had with the validity of their ordinations. But if, as Paul writes to Timothy, ordination was by a group of presbyters/elders (“Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you,” 1 Tim. 4:14 ESV), then the presence of multiple Anglican presbyters was enough to satisfy the conditions of a valid ordination even by a liturgical model of apostolic succession—just not the traditional model held to by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and others. But as stated before, St Jerome writes that for several centuries, it was common practice in the Patriarchate of Alexandria for presbyters to choose one from among their own number and make him bishop, because “what function, excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter?" (Epistles 146.1). 

Bishops are consecrated as bishops, though usage of the two terms, ordination and consecration, is mixed among Anglicans and Roman Catholics. Post-Vatican II Catholic documents prefer ordination rather than consecration. This mixed usage may be an echo of the New Testament church’s polity, which did not make a strong distinction between bishops and presbyters. Even in the Roman Catholic Church, Holy Orders is a single sacrament, and “[i]t includes three degrees”—not kinds—"episcopate, presbyterate, diaconate” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1536). This lack of a strong distinction is acknowledged even in modern Anglican scholarship. As Episcopalian bishop John Howe and Anglican (ACNA) presbyter Sam Pascoe jointly write in Our Anglican Heritage: 

[T]he New Testament uses the titles “bishop” (or overseer) and “elder” (presbyter) interchangeably. Bishops were presbyters/elders, and vice versa. For instance, Paul reminded Titus that he had left him in Crete to “appoint elders [presbuteros] in every town as I directed you, someone who is blameless….For a bishop [episkopon], as God’s steward must be blameless” (Titus 1:5-7). In Acts 20:17, Paul summoned the presbuterous of Ephesus to confer with him, but when they arrived, he called them “bishops” (episkopous) (v.28). Peter wrote, “I exhort the elders [presbuterous] among you, as a fellow elder….Tend the flock of God over which you have been made overseers [episkopountes] (1 Peter 5:1-2). In discussing the orders of ministry in Anglican churches today, we need to bear in mind that in the New Testament bishops and priests were not yet distinct from each other (132).

The issue of the validity of Methodist ordinations comes down to whether anyone had rightful authority to ordain clergy for the United States after the disestablishment of the Church of England there. Did even a bishop of the Church of England have that authority? The Episcopalians’ founding bishops, particularly Samuel Seabury, thought so. For his part, Wesley said that he was violating no one’s rights, given that there were no Anglican bishops in North America at the point when he and Creighton set aside Thomas Coke as a superintendent/bishop. Robert Prichard’s A History of the Episcopal Church complains of the American Methodists, “Were they to wait American methodists [sic] would have had a resident bishop consecrated by the Church of England to whom they could turn for ordination” (120)—but of course, American Methodists were unaware of the other Anglicans’ success at getting an episcopal candidate consecrated by Anglican bishops (though in Seabury’s case, it was actually nonjuring Anglican bishops in Scotland). And, as Wesley’s letter to American Methodists sent over with Coke indicated, Methodists had misgivings about taking on the baggage of Anglican hierarchy in North America. Early American history indicates that Episcopalians were much more sympathetic to Methodists, and Coke was actually in dialogue with Episcopalian bishops like Seabury about a more “regular” consecration for Methodist bishops for a time, but it could be argued that Wesley’s decades of experience with hostile elements within the Church of England colored his views.

Proving a liturgical interpretation of apostolic succession is probably impossible, especially if one were to remove bishops into a separate order from presbyters, as most of Christianity did after the first few centuries. The early church historian Eusebius attempted it, in fact, and had to leave the matter unsettled. There are even two conflicting lists of the first three bishops of Rome. In his book Apostolic Succession: A Failed Experiment, David Brattston cites St Irenaeus’s Against Heresies as saying that “Peter and Paul ordained Linus as the first Roman bishop, who was succeeded in order by Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telephorus, Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, Soter, and Eleutherius” (loc 3). But in The Life of the Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., Samuel Drew notes that other ancient authorities gave different lists: “In the catalogue of Epiphanius, the early Bishops of Rome are placed in the following orders[:] Peter and Paul, Linus, Clemens [Clement], and Euaristus [Evaristus]” (80). A strict bishop-to-bishop laying-on of hands is hard to prove: Brattson researched it and found that 96.5% of today’s Roman Catholic bishops can only trace their episcopal lineage back to the 16th century. Interestingly, Swedish Lutherans (who, in a situation much like the Church of England, were a state church and thus had bishops take Protestant theological positions and pass them on to subsequent bishops, while maintaining their traditional episcopal offices) are able to trace it back about a decade further back. But is a strict transmission by laying-on of hands necessary to justify apostolic succession? Much like Paul was accepted as an apostle despite Jesus appearing to him “last of all, as to one untimely born” (1 Cor 15:8 NRSV), could an ordination be made valid, and within apostolic succession, by the acceptance of other Christians, both clergy and laity? A provably unbroken line may not be necessary, but some sort of passing-down of authority must occur from those who have gone before. The Church has to recognize the authority that God gives a clergyperson; it is not enough that one take it upon oneself.

Ecumenical considerations may have us willing to extend the right hand of fellowship to those who celebrate no sacraments at all (for example, the Salvation Army or the Quakers). We may rightfully regard any baptized Christian as our brother or sister in Christ, and thus welcome her or him to the communion table, even if that person does not share our views on ordination, infant baptism, entire sanctification, or anything else. But for Methodists, as for most Christians, the apostolic message is not enough to make a valid ordination. It requires something more. For some Christian traditions, the vote of confidence of the congregation is enough. John Wesley would argue that Methodist clergy are as valid as any other Christian clergy, but not solely because “the pure Word of God” is preached by our preachers. Just as important is that “the Sacraments are duly administered according to Christ’s ordinance” (Methodist Articles of Religion, Art. XIII). Wesley would argue that the Sacraments are duly administered because our celebrants are ordained through a line of presbyter-bishops—him, Coke, and Creighton, and through those who ordained them—and though it does not follow later developments, it follows the New Testament pattern and the pattern of a minority report within the early Church. In this, it was not a revision of ecclesiology, but a reformation—a return to what had once been practiced among some, though by no means all, early Christians.

James Mahoney is a librarian and chaplain. He is an ordained Elder in the Western States Annual Conference of the Global Methodist Church.