Introduction

and the Roman Catholic Church in common, in accordance with historic tradition from the earliest times.

It is true, of course, that East and West are divided on the question of the place of the Papacy within the universal episcopate, but that is a domestic problem, concerned only with the full nature of apostolic succession as Christ ordained it. For the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church, organic unity and the indivisibility of the episcopate are essential. For both, schism cannot be within the Church, it is necessarily a cutting off from the Church, which leaves the Church undivided because indivisible. Only a Church of this nature can speak with a single voice concerning its own nature and authority and can claim infallibility for its own unified teaching. This both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, alone amongst the Churches of Christendom, do. The Churches sprung from the Reformation all hold the Church Christ founded to be a divided entity. Until its divided parts come together into a single organic entity it can have no single authoritative voice to speak to the world or to witness to the nature of its own constitution and teaching authority.

This is the crux of the problem of Christian unity. The ultimate alternatives in its solution are, either that the Church of Christ is an organic structural unity, kept so under God by its full possession of apostolic succession, or that the Scriptures, apart from the Church, are supreme, and the Church is the gathered community of those whose faith is drawn direct from the written Word, without the necessity of human intermediary. In the first alternative, the episcopate, as a function of the Believing Community, decisively interprets the inspired Scriptures, which are its possession in Christ; this is the work of the continuous witness of Tradition, embodying, by the Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ. In the second alternative, where there is no authoritative episcopate, individual faith is in the last resort alone authoritative within the believing community and alone interprets God's Word to men. This is the Catholic-Protestant dialectic, which Christendom must resolve if unity is to be achieved.

For other Churches, such as those forming the Utrecht Union of Old Catholics, the Churches of the Anglican Communion, and the Scandinavian Churches, each in its present state is a divided entity, so the authoritative functioning of their respective episcopates as a teaching magisterium in the manner of Rome and the Eastern Churches, is not possible. Still less is this possible in some other

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