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Andrew Stout, St. Charles Community College, 4601 Mid Rivers Mall Dr.,
Cottleville, MO 63376, astout@stchas.edu
1. For a helpful summary and assessment of mainline ecumenical efforts, see Michael
Kinnamon, Can a Renewal Movement be Renewed?: Questions for the Future of Ecumenism
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014).
2. See Michael Allen and Scott Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for
Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015); for Peter
Leithart’s definition of Reformed catholicity, see “The End of Protestantism,” First Things,
November 8, 2013, http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/11/the-end-of-prot-
estantism; see James K. A. Smith “‘Lift Up Your Hearts’: John Calvin’s Catholic Faith,”
lecture, Meeter Center Lecture, Calvin College & Seminary, Grand Rapids, MI, October 11,
2012, for a scholarly treatment of Smith’s understanding of Reformed catholicity, and Letters
to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press,
2010), for a popular treatment.
3. J. Todd Billings, “Catholic and Reformed: Rediscovering a Tradition,” Pro Ecclesia 23:2
(Summer 2014), 139. For more on his understanding of the catholic-Reformed tradition, see
J. Todd Billings, “The Catholic Calvin,” Pro Ecclesia 22:2 (Spring 2011), 134.
4. Geoffrey Wainwright, Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life (Oxford; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000), viii. Similarly, Michael W. Goheen explains that “Newbigin merged
more Reformed ecclesiological emphases, like the calling of the laity and the Christian
contribution to cultural development, with Anabaptist elements like the communal and
antithetical dimensions of the church’s mission” (“‘As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Send-
ing You’: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology,” International Review of Mission 91:362
[July 2002], 367).
5. Lesslie Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography (Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 2009 [1993]), 14.
joined with Methodists and Anglicans to form the Church of South India
(CSI) in 1947, and Newbigin became one of the church’s founding bishops.
He served as the bishop of Madurai and Ramnad from 1947 to 1952 and the
bishop of Madras from 1965 to 1974. After moving back to England, New-
bigin was faced with a choice of deciding where to transfer his ministerial
credentials. Instead of making what might have been the more obvious
choice of ministering within the Church of England, he chose instead to
return to his Reformed roots. His commitment to the work of unity in the
CSI “required that we should choose the one from which we had come.
This was the more attractive since the Presbyterian and Congregational
branches of the Reformed version of the faith had become one in the United
Reformed Church. I therefore applied to the URC for admission as a min-
ister and was in due course received.”6 The former bishop served as the
national moderator of the United Reformed Church (URC) from 1978 to
1979 and served as the pastor of a small URC congregation in Birmingham
from 1980 to 1988. These roles in the URC allowed Newbigin to continue to
participate in potential reunion schemes between the Church of England,
Reformed, and Methodist churches. From his childhood to his time as a
university and ministerial student, and throughout his ministerial career,
Newbigin displayed an ecumenically oriented commitment to Presbyterian
and Reformed churches and governmental forms.
Second, the distinction between the visible and the invisible Church,
found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, is reflected in Newbigin’s
ecclesiology. On the invisibility of the Church, chapter 25 of the Confes-
sion states: “The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists
of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered
into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the
fulness of Him that fills all in all.” The Church can also be viewed from
the perspective of its concrete and visible form: “The visible Church,
which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to
one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the
world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the king-
dom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which
there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.” The rest of the chapter goes
on to discuss the purity of the visible Church in its doctrine, ministry, and
worship. While the chapter begins with an explanation that the Church is
“invisible” in the sense that we do not have the capacity to view the full-
ness of its scope, the Confession is primarily concerned with the Church
as it can be visibly discerned in gathered congregations.
The visible unity of the Church was the driving factor in Newbigin’s
thinking about the nature of the faith. In the introduction to the second
edition of The Reunion of the Church: A Defence of the South India Scheme,
Newbigin articulates his sense of the urgency of the Church’s unity:
For Newbigin, the visible unity of the Church is not an agenda that
we are free to pursue or ignore at our own leisure. The Church is called
to be a community visibly united under Christ, and that intention must
motivate our ecumenism. The Church “first of all exists as a visible fact
called into being by the Lord Himself, and our understanding of that
fact is subsequent and secondary. This actual visible community, a com-
pany of men and women with ascertainable names and addresses, is the
Church of God.”8 The Church is visible, local, and concrete in nature.
“In contradiction to this, the idea of the invisible Church, in its popular
use, derives its main attraction—unless I am much mistaken—from the
fact that each of us can determine its membership as he will. It is our
ideal Church, containing the people whom we—in our present stage
of spiritual development—would regard as fit members.”9 The popular
understanding of the invisible Church often mitigates against unity by
creating a rationale by which it is possible to formulate a private criteria
for inclusion in the “true” Church. Newbigin recognizes, however, that
there is “a very important truth behind the idea of the invisible Church:
that which constitutes the Church is invisible, for it is nothing less than
the work of God’s Holy Spirit.”[AQ] Still, the truth that must be kept at
[AQ: Please the forefront is the fact that “the Church itself is the visible company of
add cita-
tion for
quotation.]
7. Lesslie Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church: The Defence of the South India Scheme (West-
port, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979 [1948]), xiii–xiv.
8. Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (Eugene, OR:
Wipf and Stock, 2008 [1953]), 27.
9. Newbigin, The Household of God, 28.
those who have been called by Him into the fellowship of His Son.”10
Though he is dubious about the way that the language of the invisible
Church has been put to use, Newbigin, like the Westminster Confession,
emphasizes the importance of dealing with and evaluating the Church as
it can be seen in visible congregations while also acknowledging that the
Church can never fully be reduced to that which we can see. In this way,
the invisible/visible Church distinction is a Reformed principle that plays
an integral role in Newbigin’s ecclesiology. Though Newbigin does not
appeal explicitly to Westminster in his treatment of the distinction, one
cannot help but suspect that the language of the Confession had seeped
into the bones of this Reformed churchman.
Third, Newbigin applies the reformational emphasis on the doctrine
of justification by grace through faith, along with Luther’s principle of
simul justus et pecator, to the question of the visibility and reunification of
the Church. He notes that when The Reunion of the Church was first pub-
lished, the pivotal argument regarding justification by faith was ignored
by reviewers, “except one—who complained that it was out of place in
a book on the Church.”11 In chapter 6, “Justification by Faith,” Newbigin
covers the topics of the redemptive work of Christ, the believer’s faith in
Christ’s work, and justification’s dependence on faith; his treatment of
these topics is very much in line with the statements on justification in
chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession. He goes on to elaborate that
justifying faith “cannot be severed from its actual living context, namely
the fellowship of the Church. The new relation with God through Christ
is necessarily also a new relation with all who share it.”12 Elsewhere, he
comments on the visible and public nature of this justification:
God justifies men by free grace, and man’s part is to believe. That is for the
apostle a clear and unassailable certainty. But how does He do it? It is not
done by some private secret transaction between God and each individual
soul, but publicly—as it were—upon the plane of history. He made a cove-
nant with Abraham ‘and his seed’. He called Israel as a people to be His peo-
ple, to be His holy nation, His royal priesthood. He has established a visible
congregation with visible signs. It is emphatically to this congregation—to
the actual historic community of Israel—that He has given ‘the adoption,
the glory, the covenants, the law, the service of God and the promises’, and
it is to this community that Christ in His human nature belongs. ‘Salvation’,
as the Lord Himself said, ‘is from the Jews’.13
God began his gracious work of justification with Abraham and his fam-
ily. With the inclusion of the Gentiles into this covenant of grace, God’s
redemption through Christ is made visible and public in the Church, its
structures, and its sacraments.
The corporate and visible nature of justification is essential to New-
bigin’s rationale for the reunification of the Church. In justification, God
takes sinful men and attributes to them the righteousness of Christ. It is
a work of pure grace for the Church no less than it is for the individual.
“The Church is both holy and sinful. This is the fundamental root of
the whole problem of the Church, that it is a union of sinful souls with
Holy God.”14 By affirming that the Church is holy and sinful, Newbigin
attempts to synthesize two ecclesial attitudes: first, a Protestant mindset
that would locate the essential unity of the Church in “the event of the
preaching of the Gospel and the administering of the sacraments,” while
leaving visible unity to be expressed in federations of organizationally
separate church bodies; second, a Catholic ecclesiology which emphasizes
the Church’s status as “a continuing historical society,” the sinlessness of
which is ensured by unbroken succession with the historic episcopate.15
To maintain either of these two positions exclusively would be to deny
the tension that a sinning yet holy Church must maintain in this time
between the ascension and the parousia: “That is our situation in the
flesh—simul justus et peccator—and we are in it together. . . . The final
judgement belongs to God alone on the last day. We are to judge nothing
before the time. Every attempt to slacken the eschatological tension by
supposing now some sort of true Church within the Church, involves a
concealed—and sometimes open—pharisaism.”16 To deny this dual status
to the Church is to fall prey to an over-realized eschatology that sees the
Church as an already visibly unified whole. If justification by faith is al-
lowed to guide our understanding of reunion, then neither Protestants
nor Catholics can claim their own particular ecclesiological credentials are
that which makes them the true Church. Both must recognize essential
components of the Body of Christ in the other, acknowledging the pos-
sibility that God could add those to the number of the “true” Church who
do not have the pedigree of unbroken episcopal succession. Newbigin
offers a kind of “third way” between these two alternatives:
If then the divided bodies are truly parts of the Church, two methods of
uniting them are ruled out. One is that which treats one part as alone the
Church and the others as dissident groups which have to be reunited to it.
The other is that which treats all the parts as though they were quite sepa-
rate and autonomous human societies which could freely decide whether
and on what terms they will agree to form unions with one another. Re-
union must be the restoring of the unity which has been broken, the fruit
of a penitent return to Christ Himself.17
It is possible to believe (as I do) that it is God’s will that the Church should
be episcopally ordered, and yet deny absolutely that episcopal ordination
is essential for a valid ministry. For the being of the Church, and therefore
the validity of its ministry, rest not upon the conformity of the Church to
God’s will, but upon the grace of God who justifies the ungodly. Once
again we come to the doctrine of justification by faith. If episcopal ordina-
tion is essential to a valid ministry, then that ministry which is not episco-
pally ordained is not a valid ministry and has no way of becoming such
except by receiving the ordination which it lacks. But if the true secret of
the Church’s being is that it is the place where God’s supernatural grace
takes hold of those who were no people and makes them His people, takes
the prodigal and makes him a beloved son, takes the sinful man and the
sinful body of men and makes them verily members incorporate in the
Body of Christ for no worthiness of theirs but for His own infinite mercy;
then one can both insist that episcopacy is God’s will for the Church and at
the same time acknowledge without any hedging or double-talk that non-
episcopal bodies are truly churches. That is the root of the matter. Confor-
mity to God’s will is not the precondition of fellowship with Him, but the
18. As he began to lend his efforts to the plan of reunion that resulted in the CSI, Newbi-
gin was not initially convinced of the necessity of the historic episcopate. He notes that what
changed his mind was “the reading of Michael Ramsey’s book The Gospel and the Catholic
Church. I found there a doctrine of the ministry which did not contravene but rested upon
the biblical doctrine of justification by grace through faith, and I saw that the historic epis-
copate could be gladly accepted as something given by the grace of God to be the means
of unity. But this meant that one had to reject at the same time any way of interpreting the
historic episcopate which made it a conditio sine qua non of the fullness of grace. That was
what some Anglo-Catholic theologians seemed to be doing.” Unfinished Agenda, 70.
fruit of it. God justifies the ungodly in Jesus Christ. That is the secret of the
being of the Church as it is of the Christian man.19
Those who believe, as I do, that God wills His Church to be one body,
united not only in word and sacrament but also in visible fellowship with
a universal ministry credibly representative of that apostolic ministry
which was its first foundation, must also listen to the apostolic teaching
about justification by faith as our only standing ground in the presence of
God. If they will do so, then they can look forward to a growing visible re-
integration not in some distant hypothetical future but now in the decades
immediately before us.22
The basis of it all would be the intention, accepted by all, to move together
towards a time when all the Covenanting Churches share the ministry of
persons who perform the functions of personal pastoral oversight over an
area larger than that of the local congregation, who share responsibility for
leadership of the Church in teaching, evangelism and action, and whose
ordination/consecration is such that it embodies the unanimous assent,
prayer and authorisation of all the churches and is therefore within the
historic ministry of the universal Church. This would in fact be the es-
sential substance of the historic episcopate, and I cannot doubt that before
long it would be clear that those who exercise this ministry are bishops
and should be so described. But the substance is at least as important as
the name.28
members of one body is surely a profanation of the sacrament” (“What Is ‘a Local Church
Truly United’?” Ecumenical Review 29:2 [April 1977], 122).
28. Quoted in Wainwright, A Theological Life, 122.
29. Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda, 87.
30. God’s Reign and Our Unity: The Report of the Anglican-Reformed International Com-
mission, 1981-1984, paragraph 92. Though this report was the result of a commission that
was appointed by the Anglican Consultative Council and the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches, Geoffrey Wainwright notes that “Newbigin—as would in any case have been
evident from the vocabulary and the style—was the principal writer of the final document”
(A Theological Life, 124).
These visible forms of unity will include at all levels both the personal leader-
ship which is appropriate to that level, and also synodical structures through
which the common faith of the Church can be expressed. It is true that there
are important divisions among Christians as to the relative roles of these
two elements—personal and synodical—at different levels of the Church’s
life, but the same basic principles apply at all levels because the fundamental
reality is the same at all levels—namely the reality of the shared life in Christ
for the doing of his will at every level of the world’s life.32
episcopacy has existed in almost every possible variety of form. The es-
sential point is not one or other of these varieties, but the possession of
the commission from Christ through the Apostles. Perhaps the nearest
modern approach to the earliest form of mon-episcopacy is the Presbyte-
rian minister, surrounded by his elders and sharing with them the duty of
episcope, but having himself alone the right to administer the sacraments.
But, according to the view we are considering, the Presbyterian minister
does not—as a matter of historical fact—possess the apostolic commission
which is the guarantee of the Church’s continuance. That commission
is now, as a matter of fact, held by the men whom the church now calls
“bishops.”36
34. Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church, 18. See also The Household of God, 53.
35. Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church, 149.
36. Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church, 151.
37. God’s Reign and Our Unity, paragraph 112(a).
We think that Reformed churches should accept the fact that, at every
level, oversight needs to be exercised in a way that is both personal and
corporate. Personal oversight apart from the wisdom of a corporate body
is apt to become arbitrary and erratic; oversight by a corporate body
without a personal pastor is apt to become bureaucratic and legalistic. In
fact many Reformed churches have developed forms of oversight at the
regional level which combine both elements effectively.39
The position of the Bishop as the Chief pastor of the flock in each area has
become something that hardly anyone would wish even to think of aban-
doning. But, on the other hand, the Church has a far more open door to
the non-episcopal communions than the written text of the Basis of Union.
I can only interpret these two facts to mean that episcopacy is seen and
valued as the visible centre of the process by which the Good Shepherd
gathers together His own; and that the desire to see this unifying and rec-
onciling work extended and strengthened overmasters any desire to make
claims of episcopacy which would exclude those who are willing to come
into the fellowship.42
It has been established that Newbigin worked and thought largely within
Reformed confessional parameters. It is even clear that much of his ratio-
nal for the legitimacy of the historic episcopate is rooted in reformational
concepts. However, it could still be asked whether Newbigin’s synthesis
of Presbyterian and episcopal polity is a consistent development of these
Reformed sources. I believe that it is a consistent development, and I will
attempt to locate the space for this development by looking briefly at the
views of Calvin and the Westminster divines regarding the episcopate
and the role of the bishop. I will also look at some more recent trends in
Reformed theology that support a development of Reformed ecclesiology
along lines similar to those advocated by Newbigin. If Newbigin is to be
a resource for those who identify with “Reformed Catholicism” in the at-
tempt to contribute to and participate in a more visibly unified Church,
then it must be shown that he is not simply discarding the inconvenient
elements of Reformed ecclesiology in favor of a more expedient approach.
At a very basic level, Calvin is committed to the cause of a visibly
united church. Though he distinguishes between the visible and invisible
church, I. John Hesselink believes it is clear that “Calvin would not have
settled for mere ‘spiritual’ union. All his exhortations about unity refer to
the visible, not the invisible church.” Hesselink goes on to quote John T.
McNeill, who observes that “his passion for ecumenical unity induced an
ecclesiastical tolerance that was unusual in his day and is still distasteful
to many who profess themselves Christians.”45 Like Newbigin, Calvin’s
ecclesial vision and efforts are directed toward a Church that is unified
under common ministries.
Calvin understands the roles of “bishop” and “presbyter” to be identi-
cal when it come to the explicit biblical use of the terms.46 However, he
45. I. John Hesselink, “Calvinus Oecumenicus: Calvin’s Vision of the Unity and Catholic-
ity of the Church” in The Unity of the Church: A Theological State of the Art and Beyond, ed.
Eduardus Van der Borght (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010), 92.
46. Michael Ramsey critiques Calvin’s distinction between bishop and presbyter. Ramsey
acknowledges that Calvin’s distinction is correct in terms of the original sense of the New
Testament texts, but he notes that Calvin “was using Scripture in the archeological way. He
failed to perceive in the New Testament the organic relation of the local community to the
whole Church, the place of the Apostles as representing this relation, the permanent char-
acter of this relation in Church life, the need for the Apostolate (other than the presbyterate)
to represent this relation in every age. The answer to Calvin is to appeal to Scripture, not
archaeologically but ‘organically,’ and to study the growing organism, and the Apostles’
unique place in it and thence to see the later Episcopate filling the same place” (The Gos-
pel and the Catholic Church, 196). Newbigin, clearly influenced by Ramsey on this point, is
working with Ramsey’s “organic” hermeneutic rather than Calvin’s “archaeological” her-
meneutic. As Ramsey points out, Calvin’s position is not simply mistaken. It is accurate to
a certain extent, but it needs to be supplemented by an approach to Scripture with a more
All those to whom the office of teaching was enjoined they called “presby-
ters.” In each city these chose one of their number to whom they specially
gave the title “bishop” in order that dissensions might not arise (as com-
monly happens) from equality of rank. Still, the bishop was not so much
higher in honor and dignity as to have lordship over his colleagues. But
the same functions that the consul has in the senate—to report on busi-
ness, to request opinions, to preside over others in counseling, admonish-
ing, and exhorting, to govern the whole action by his authority, and to
carry out what was decreed by common decision—the bishop carried out
in the assembly of presbyters.47
For Calvin, the diocesan bishop was a legitimate and biblical, though
not absolutely necessary, development of the role of the presbyter. Cit-
ing Jerome, he notes that “the ancients themselves admit that this was
introduced by human agreement to meet the need of the times.”48 These
bishops were primarily pastors rather than bureaucrats. Explaining the
“chief duty” of ministers, Calvin says that “both bishops and presbyters
had to devote themselves to the dispensing of the Word and sacraments,”
noting specifically that “it was a principle of long standing in the church
that the primary duties of the bishop were to feed his people with the
Word of God, or to build up the church publicly and privately with sound
doctrine.”49 For both Newbigin and Calvin, the office of bishop is above
all pastoral and liturgical. Based on his status as a pastor, he acts as a
representative of a local body of presbyters or pastors, acting as a focal
point of unity between congregations. The office of bishop is a flexible
one that is adapted to the needs the church in a particular time and place.
Unbroken apostolic succession is not an absolute requirement for either
robust understanding of the organic nature of the Church and of doctrinal development.
This indicates how those who are Reformed, yet Catholic-minded, can understand their own
ecclesial position—as one that is provisional and temporary as they work toward the full
unity of the Church expressed in a restored episcopate.
47. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and Ford Lewis Bat-
tles, Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 4.4.2.
48. Calvin, Institutes, 4.4.2.
49. Calvin, Institutes, 4.4.3. Eugene P. Heideman observes that it is only when a bishop
fails to fulfill this ministerial role, as Calvin believed Roman Catholic bishops had, that he
should be rejected. Heideman discerns an ecumenical motivation in Calvin’s approach to
bishops. “He did not advocate setting up a rival set of bishops in the Reformed Churches. As
a result of Calvin’s actions, theoretically, at least, the way remained open to the recognition
of the bishops in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as true bishops when they again fulfilled
their magisterium” (Reformed Bishops and Catholic Elders [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1970], 103).
50. Robert Letham, The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context,
Westminster Assembly and the Reformed Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2009), 115.
51. Letham, The Westminster Assembly, 116.
52. Heideman, Reformed Bishops and Catholic Elders, 7. For information on the Reformed
Church in America’s role in the CSI, including Heideman’s personal involvement, see his
book From Church to Mission: The Reformed Church in America Mission to India, the Historical
Series of the Reformed Church in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001). For a brief
portrait of Newbigin working through questions of Reformed theology in the young CSI,
see 658–59.
53. Eduardus Van der Borght, Theology of Ministry: A Reformed Contribution to an Ecumeni-
cal Dialogue, Studies in Reformed Theology (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 287. For more on
how a Reformed understanding of the ministerial office can contribute to unity, see Allan
Janssen, “Office as an Instrument of Unity,” in The Unity of the Church: A Theological State of
the Art and Beyond, ed. Eduardus Van der Borght (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010), 243–46.