Reading Barth’s Romans commentary this morning, I am struck by his reading of the faith and circumcision of Abraham and its potential relevance to the question of historical continuity in apostolic succession:
Since the heirs are what they are not through the law but of faith, not as a consequence of moral and historical status but according to grace, it follows as a matter of course that participation in their company cannot be confined to those who have been made the children of Abraham according to the law, cannot be limited to the historical Israel, or to those who accept a particular and definite historical tradition and doctrine, or to those who are members of some particular ‘movement’. Such limitation in the number of the heirs makes the inheritance itself more than insecure….By the faithfulness of God, men who move in a different moral and historical environment can be directed to revelation….The word delivered to Abraham according to grace, which he heard by faith, admits of no esoteric confinement; it is valid for all who have the form of a man. It cuts down vertically, from above, through every particular human status. Through the emergence of that status which men have in God, every human status is established by dissolution.
…
Abraham is, of course, the father of the single nation, Israel; but we have seen that, because in Christ he is the father of this one nation, he is also, at the same time and in consequence, the father of many nations. The historical framework is broken through when the secret of history is laid bare.
~ Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 139 (commenting on Rom 4.16-17).
Of course there is a certain irony in using the argument of a Reformed presbyterian like Barth in order to support a particular version of the episcopacy. But I suspect that this is among the better gifts that the Reformed tradition can offer the church universal: a reminder that–because of the primacy of grace–collegiality is universal and not just reserved for a special few. As Archbishop of York John Sentamu said to me last year, apostolic succession is not a matter of “hocus-pocus.” It is the about the transmission of orthodoxy. It is a gift, albeit one that constitutes a means to another end, a much greater gift, the gift of faith.
