Lawfully Ordained Ministers, Keys of the Kingdom, Apostalic Succession.

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Ray

Ray

Puritan Board Freshman
Can anyone point me to any good resources showing how Protestants Ministers have Apostalic succession? And How Lawfully Ordained Ministers are the only ones allowed to Preach, Teach And Administer Sacraments? I've never heard this preached from the Pulpit either. Any sermons on this Doctrine?
 
We don't believe in "apostolic succession," so it's hard to argue for that.

With many hierarchical churches, most prominently the RC and EO; together (in a sense) with Trail-of-Blood Baptists; there is a claim to a doctrine of apostolic succession. Which is: the belief that the Christ-ordained apostles ordained successors, who have passed on (originally in RC, very much unbroken chain) hand-to-hand the church's authority.

We don't believe that myth. We do believe God preserves his church. We believe in doctrinal succession, if you will, where those who teach the Bible faithfully are the "true church," holding unswervingly to the gospel-doctrine of the apostles. A church can decline from that faith, but later regain what was lost. There does not have to be a unbroken chain." Not when Gentiles can be sons of Abraham.

Now, as for the doctrine of the ministry (which sounds like your real interest), this is an adjunct of Christ's authority as king and head of his church. Those who are called to service are his agents. Much like your local policeman is the sanctioned representative of the laws and government under which you live. You don't want just anybody going about claiming to have "lawful authority" to arrest and enforce limits and access in public, right? So, is it any surprise if Christ has order in his Kingdom? As those who do wear the mantle of the apostle's original and extraordinary authority (but in ordinary fashion), these appointees are "stewards of the mysteries of God," 1Cor.4:1-2.

I don't know about sermons right off the bat; but you should familiarize yourself with the WCF chs. 25, 27, 30 as a start. Then, perhaps take a look at your church's book of discipline.
 
I have a book on Ministerial Ordination which I am going to be working on for March. Its James L. Ainslie, The Doctrines of Ministerial Order in the Reformed Churches of the 16th and 17th Centuries (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1940).
It's quite good but not available yet.
 
Thank you brothers. Thanks for clarifying things Bruce. I was a little bit confused. Do Reformed and Presbyterian consider Lutheran, Reformed Anglican, Episcopal Lawfully Ordained if they maintain the True Gospel and Sacraments and haven't apostated? Even though some of there other doctrines are like Swiss cheese with holes in it.
 
C. Matthew McMahon said:
I have a book on Ministerial Ordination which I am going to be working on for March. Its James L. Ainslie, The Doctrines of Ministerial Order in the Reformed Churches of the 16th and 17th Centuries (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1940).
It's quite good but not available yet.
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Looking forward to this. I Still have a lot of books to read though.
 
It's not a sermon, but Heidelberg Q&A 82-85 is helpful if you haven't read it in a while.
 
Ray said:
Thank you brothers. Thanks for clarifying things Bruce. I was a little bit confused. Do Reformed and Presbyterian consider Lutheran, Reformed Anglican, Episcopal Lawfully Ordained if they maintain the True Gospel and Sacraments and haven't apostated? Even though some of there other doctrines are like Swiss cheese with holes in it.
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Rom. 14:4, "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls."

WCF 25, Of the Church
IV. This catholic Church has been sometimes more, sometimes less visible.8 And particular Churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the Gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.9

We should look for the marks of the true church (see Belgic Confesssion art.29), and honor what largely or not remains to any church of that name that she retains. I heard M.Horton relay a story about being at a communion service, led presumably by a recognizable minister of Christ's church. He partook at the time, but his associate did not; so he asked him why he did not. The answer: the preaching simply did not have (to this man's ability to grasp it, or his sensitivity) sufficient gospel in which to have faith enough to be strengthened by the offered sacrament.

The point, it seems to me, is that it is the gospel to be recognized in particular, and not the cognizable ordination of him that administers, that ultimately makes a sacrament true. That does not make ordination of so little importance that it may be dispensed with. Nor does it make valid unordained administration. One may further inject complication to the analysis by evaluating sacramental administration as regular vs. irregular. But at any rate, it would be nice if everyone was a strict Presbyterian--yet they are not.
 
[From Ainslie's thesis.]

"The Reformed Churches almost, if not quite, unanimously did not hold any “Conveyance-Transmission” Theory, not even that form of it which accepted a “transmission” through the main body of the Ministry. But they were ready to hold a kind of Apostolic Succession. It was one they could be sure of. It was a Doctrinal Succession. The London Provincial Assembly, 1654, was coming back to a true Reformed position when it declared for its ministry, that it had “not only a lineal succession, but that which is more, without which the lineal is no benefit, we have a Doctrinal Succession also.” There is the doctrine of the Ministry of the Word asserting itself again. The Reformed Churches believed in a “doctrinal succession” for that could agree well with their doctrine of preaching being the constituting element of the true Ministry. This “Doctrinal Succession” was not a transmission of Apostolic Doctrine from predecessor to successor. It was rather a succession of the “Series” type, and yet not of a series of men in the same office and place as the Popes of Rome claim. It was a series of all the men in the official ministry of the Church, which itself in some form or another had existed from the earliest times of the Church to the latest, who held forth the same Word of God, deriving it, not each from his predecessor till the Apostles were reached, but from Christ and the Apostles, and by means of the Scriptures. Every true Minister of the Word formed the “Series” stretching as a long line from the earliest to the latest times.
 
See our sermon with the Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 158, "Only Preachers Preach: By Whom is the Word of God to be Preached?" It deals with reading and especially preaching of the word (with the historic reformed understanding of the "priestly" work of NT called and ordained ministers per Romans 15:15-16, Isaiah 61:6, and Hebrews 5:1-6) and also connects dots with administering the sacraments and other important contextual parts of the Westminster Assembly's work. Also relevant are our sermons:
  • With WLC Q&A 156 in our series through the WLC, "Is the Word of God to be Read by All?", here.
  • From Leviticus 6:8-13 through 7:34, and especially Leviticus Chapter 8, beginning here (the first sermon being offered on WLC 158 above will set these up).
A very important book for us (our Session and our Church as we have gone through reformation on this and related issues seeking to be more consistently Biblical and confessional) related to this topic has been, Order in the Offices: Essays Defining the Roles of Church Officers, edited by Mark Brown. It is a compilation of chapters by various authors (two of which were my seminary professors) on the "three office view" as clearly taught in the Westminster Standards (I know this latter assertion may raise some eyebrows and blood pressures but I say it without reservation). I see the book on Amazon and AbeBooks for way too much or I'd link it (I think it's out of print, and that's too bad as I think it should be required reading in seminaries on church government), but I highly recommend getting this book per your question if you can find it somewhere used or in a seminary library nearest you; here are two links helpful on it and its editor:
Also relevant and very interesting is Dr. Wayne Spear's (my dearly revered professor and elder of earlier days), Covenanted Uniformity in Religion: The Influence of the Scottish Commissioners Upon the Ecclesiology of the Westminster Assembly (Reformation Heritage Books). Especially interesting in this his doctoral work's study of the Scottish Commissioner's influence with the Westminster Assembly's "Form of Presbyterial Church Government" (its first order of business before that of its Confession, Catechisms, and Directory for Publick Worship) is what he shares about how the Scots had to convince the English that there actually was an office of elder (or ruler or governor) beside that of the other two NT offices of minister and deacon.

Another great resource that is broader in scope but fairly involved with these questions is Dr. Richard Bacon's, The Visible Church and the Outer Darkness: Seventeenth Century Ecclesiology for Today.

(Note: I'm not commenting on the apostolic succession part of the question with the above resource references and comments, a concept which I've only heard a little about and reject.)
 
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Grant Van Leuven said:
See our sermon with the Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 158, "Only Preachers Preach: By Whom is the Word of God to be Preached?" It deals with reading and especially preaching of the word (with the historic reformed understanding of the "priestly" work of NT called and ordained ministers per Romans 15:15-16, Isaiah 61:6, and Hebrews 5:1-6) and also connects dots with administering the sacraments and other important contextual parts of the Westminster Assembly's work. Also relevant are our sermons:
  • With WLC Q&A 156 in our series through the WLC, "Is the Word of God to be Read by All?", here.
  • From Leviticus 6:8-13 through 7:34, and especially Leviticus Chapter 8, beginning here (the first sermon being offered on WLC 158 above will set these up).
A very important book for us (our Session and our Church as we have gone through reformation on this and related issues seeking to be more consistently Biblical and confessional) related to this topic has been, Order in the Offices: Essays Defining the Roles of Church Officers, edited by Mark Brown. It is a compilation of chapters by various authors (two of which were my seminary professors) on the "three office view" as clearly taught in the Westminster Standards (I know this latter assertion may raise some eyebrows and blood pressures but I say it without reservation). I see the book on Amazon and AbeBooks for way too much or I'd link it (I think it's out of print, and that's too bad as I think it should be required reading in seminaries on church government), but I highly recommend getting this book per your question if you can find it somewhere used or in a seminary library nearest you; here are two links helpful on it and its editor:
Also relevant and very interesting is Dr. Wayne Spear's (my dearly revered professor and elder of earlier days), Covenanted Uniformity in Religion: The Influence of the Scottish Commissioners Upon the Ecclesiology of the Westminster Assembly (Reformation Heritage Books). Especially interesting in this his doctoral work's study of the Scottish Commissioner's influence with the Westminster Assembly's "Form of Presbyterial Church Government" (its first order of business before that of its Confession, Catechisms, and Directory for Publick Worship) is what he shares about how the Scots had to convince the English that there actually was an office of elder (or ruler or governor) beside that of the other two NT offices of minister and deacon.

Another great resource that is broader in scope but fairly involved with these questions is Dr. Richard Bacon's, The Visible Church and the Outer Darkness: Seventeenth Century Ecclesiology for Today.

(Note: I'm not commenting on the apostolic succession part of the question with the above resource references and comments, a concept which I've only heard a little about and reject.)
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Thanks for these resources.
 
Ray said:
How Lawfully Ordained Ministers are the only ones allowed to Preach, Teach And Administer Sacraments?
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Samuel Rutherford's A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery in Scotland is a must-read on this topic. He systematically and exhaustively tears apart the Separatist doctrine that church officers derive their authority from the church of believers, and demonstrates the biblical basis for the doctrine that Christ as Head of the Church has given the Keys of the Kingdom (including the reading and preaching of the Word, administration of, admittance to and barring from the Sacraments) to the church of elders, which forms the root court of the church to which the church of believers is gathered by the exercise of the Keys.
 
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au5t1n said:
Samuel Rutherford's A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery in Scotland is a must-read on this topic. He systematically and exhaustively tears apart the Separatist doctrine that church officers derive their authority from the church of believers, and demonstrates the biblical basis for the doctrine that Christ as Head of the Church has given the Keys of the Kingdom (including the reading and preaching of the Word, administration of, admittance to and barring from the Sacraments) to the church of elders, which forms the root court of the church to which the church of believers is gathered by the exercise of the Keys.
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Was there any type of discipline done to the separatists groups by Reformed Ministers because they were performing Ministerial acts that they did not have the authority to perform? And should there be punishment towards "Un"-Lawfully Ordained Ministers?
 
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Ray said:
Was there any type of discipline done to the separatists groups by Reformed Ministers because they were performing Ministerial acts that they did not have the authority to perform? And should there be punishment towards "Un"-Lawfully Ordained Ministers?
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Ray,
Since you mentioned Reformed ministers, I assume you are asking about ecclesiastical censure and not civil penalties. Separatists had by definition separated from the established church, so there was no ecclesiastical discipline possible beyond the de facto discipline inherent in separating. If you meant civil penalties, of course these would not be in the hands of Reformed ministers. Degrees of toleration varied throughout the 17th century. For details I'd refer you to a historical work on the period. One of the Separatist leaders with whom Rutherford interacts was the pastor of the folks that had gone to America and founded Plymouth Colony. I don't remember the details, but it was civil difficulties which led them initially to seek refuge in the Netherlands, and then later in North America.

Regards,
 
Grant Van Leuven said:
For another week in a row, just saw another Reformation21 article that I think would be of great interest per this topic: The Public Reading of Scripture--Presbyterian-Style, by Brian Tallman.
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I've often been disappointed in how little that phrase in the WLC has been acknowledged and wrestled with in today's Presbyterian churches. I've also felt that, if we believe WLC 156, it's hard to justify responsive readings as well. Thoughts?
 
TheOldCourse said:
I've often been disappointed in how little that phrase in the WLC has been acknowledged and wrestled with in today's Presbyterian churches. I've also felt that, if we believe WLC 156, it's hard to justify responsive readings as well. Thoughts?
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A good question to give some thought to. We presently do have responsive readings of our readings through the OT and NT in am and pm worship services, and of the 10 Commandments in the morning, but not of the sermon texts. It is a practice that was here before I was called. Frankly, I would prefer not to have responsive readings but have not felt it something to address yet as we've had a number of things to reform on. Not exactly your question, but this post came to mind of a previous discussion on "Amen" at the end of the Lord's Prayer in the WLC, where I do argue for a responsive corporate "Amen" in the conclusion of the sermon I link to: http://www.puritanboard.com/threads/do-you-say-amen-after-public-prayers.87191/#post-1081630 I'm very interested to read the link re: Gillespie above and give it some thinking. We are a church willing to change, as we did on this issue (they used to allow others than ministers to preach both in open air and behind the pulpit. Interesting that one young man said to me recently after he had passed by the open air area where he was one that used to speak, "I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore!" There was a bit of a peer pressure to be doing so).
 
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NaphtaliPress said:
Is what we call responsive readings what the Westminster divines would have called "people's responsals"? Gillespie has a note that those and other things while they had not to show them unlawful should be laid aside for offense and uniformity's sake. https://books.google.com/books?id=IoUZAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA48&dq=weakest strongest inauthor:gillespie inauthor:george&pg=PA108#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Thanks for this link. Very interesting. I would have liked to see the issues expanded on and hear his reasonings against, but this is a great resource. Also helpful as at our last Session meeting it was just brought up for us to study whether we should have the congregation stand during the reading of the Word (not the sermon text but the regular responsive readings) as some of the elders have seen in some contexts, including RC Sproul's sermon texts: I see Gillespie would frown on that practice as well by the list of "don'ts" along with responsive readings: helpful to know for our study on the issue. Thanks for sharing!
 
NaphtaliPress said:
Is what we call responsive readings what the Westminster divines would have called "people's responsals"? Gillespie has a note that those and other things while they had not to show them unlawful should be laid aside for offense and uniformity's sake. https://books.google.com/books?id=IoUZAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA48&dq=weakest strongest inauthor:gillespie inauthor:george&pg=PA108#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Hmm, at first blush I had understood that to be referring to the calls and responses that are common in the Roman and Anglican churches and which serve as liturgical segues (e.g. "The Lord be with you" dialogue in the Eucharistic preface or the "Thus far the reading of the Word of God" call) but I could be wrong.

Andrew Myers also wrote against responsive readings some time ago: http://virginiahuguenot.blogspot.com/2009/04/tennis-in-worship.html. It's too bad he doesn't come around these parts any more.

Also Travis Fentimen has a longer analysis of the issue here: https://reformedbooksonline.com/topics/topics-by-subject/worship/responsive-readings/
 
James Walker's "Theology and Theologians of Scotland, 1560-1750" has a chapter on the Presbyterian view of Apostolic Succession.

I see it's online at Reformed Books Online, Travis Fentiman's site.

Sent from my C6903 using Tapatalk
 
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TheOldCourse said:
Hmm, at first blush I had understood that to be referring to the calls and responses that are common in the Roman and Anglican churches and which serve as liturgical segues (e.g. "The Lord be with you" dialogue in the Eucharistic preface or the "Thus far the reading of the Word of God" call) but I could be wrong.

Andrew Myers also wrote against responsive readings some time ago: http://virginiahuguenot.blogspot.com/2009/04/tennis-in-worship.html. It's too bad he doesn't come around these parts any more.

Also Travis Fentimen has a longer analysis of the issue here: https://reformedbooksonline.com/topics/topics-by-subject/worship/responsive-readings/
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Thanks for these resources!
 
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