Archbishop Peter Carnley says John Woodhouse made ‘quite serious mistakes’ in his review of the Primate’s latest book, Reflections in Glass.

I noted with interest the review by Dr John Woodhouse of my recently-published book Reflections in Glass (Southern Cross, March 2004).
While it is probably unwise to respond to the passing comments of a book reviewer, Dr Woodhouse makes two quite serious mistakes in his review that demand a response.
First, Dr Woodhouse correctly notes that I recently said (at the University of Sydney) that the Eucharist belongs in the Church’s dogmatic nucleus, along with other required matters of faith that are defined in the ancient Creeds.
But, he says, ‘the Eucharist is not mentioned in the ancient Creeds!’ I am then charged with falling into the evangelical trap of arbitrarily locating some matters centrally ‘that are not credally defined’.
Dr Woodhouse seems to have overlooked the creedal affirmation about the Communion of Saints.
While the medieval Church and the Reformers tended to think of the communio sanctorum as being inclusive of all Christians living and departed (following Paul’s description of all believers as ‘called to be saints’ in Romans 1:7 and 1 Cor 1:2), the original insertion of the phrase into the Apostles’ Creed was much more narrowly and explicitly focused.
We first come across the addition of communio sanctorum around 400AD when Bishop Nicetas of Remesiana in Serbia added it to the Creed, probably following a practice of southern Gaul. From the beginning, the formula had a double meaning.
First, it referred not to all believers so much as to the more confined company of recognised holy persons from the Old Testament patriarchs to the apostles and martyrs of the early Christian era. Secondly, it referred to a sharing in holy things (sancta), the main idea being participation in the Eucharist. This was made clear in a rescript of the Emperor Theodosius in 388AD and was confirmed at a synod at Nimes around 394 or 396AD.

Indeed, it is principally at the Eucharist that we consciously enter into the holy communion of God not only ‘with angels and archangels’, but ‘all the company of heaven’.
Eucharistic communion is integral to the material meaning of the formal creedal affirmation about the Communion of Saints.
Secondly, Dr Woodhouse seems surprised that ‘if Sydney Diocese authorised lay people to administer the Lord’s Supper (a matter on which Scripture and the Creeds are silent), this would call in question its place in the Anglican communion!’
But in this respect, once again the Scriptures are not as silent as Dr Woodhouse imagines.
We see in Scripture the clear origins of the Church’s ministry of sacrament and word in Our Lord’s mandating of the apostolic band both to celebrate the eucharist (on Maundy Thursday) and to proclaim the good news of the resurrection (in the Easter appearance at the end of Matthew’s Gospel).
The practice of authorising ministry by prayer with the laying on of hands is found regularly in the Scriptures.
The Anglican Ordinal makes it clear that ordination by prayer with the laying on of hands remains as the authorising sign of the continuity and identity of the ordered ministry of leadership in the Church, based upon these apostolic beginnings.
A departure from the biblical and traditional practice of authorising this pastoral and liturgical ministry of leadership by prayer with the laying on of hands, would not only signal a departure from the normative practice of the Anglican Communion, but from the standard received practice of the ‘One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’ of God with which we associate ourselves in the reciting of the Nicene Creed.