Ministerial Character, Intention, and the Sacraments [Commentary on Browne: Article XXVI]

It is generally agreed among commentators that Anabaptists are the primary target of Article XXVI: “Whatever may have been the popular feeling on this subject among the advocates of reformation in general, there is no doubt that the Anabaptists (in conformity with their general principle, that the whole Church should be pure and sincere) held the impropriety of receiving Sacraments from ungodly ministers,”[1] which notion the Article rejects. The issue did not originate with them, however, but goes back to the controversy in the early church over whether baptisms performed by heretics are valid. Whereas “Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage…and the African bishops who were with him, denied the validity of baptism by heretics and schismatics…. Stephen, Bishop of Rome, took the directly opposite view, admitting all baptism, whether by schismatics or heretics, so it was with water in the name of the Trinity; and such has been the rule of the Latin Church ever since.” This principle remains a source of comfort even now, for churches today are no less plagued by heretical ministers than they were in the first centuries of Christianity. Yet because the power of the sacraments does not depend on the personal character or doctrinal soundness of those who administer them, the laity do not have to fear on the minister’s account that the washing away of their sins in baptism was but an external sprinkling of water, or that the Body and Blood of Christ are but mere bread and wine.

Another topic commonly raised in connection with this Article is the Church of Rome’s so-called doctrine of Intention, which Browne characterizes as the belief that “no Sacrament is valid, unless the priest intends that it should be so.” More fully, “If…in outwardly ministering a Sacrament, [the minister] does not intend to confer the benefits of the Sacrament, they will not be conferred.” Browne does not think it “probable”[2] that the framers of the Article had this doctrine in view, but he believes the Article “virtually and in effect meets it.” The consequences of the doctrine, as Browne expounds them, are dire: “If no Sacrament is valid, unless the priest intends that it should be so; then we know not whether our children be baptized, our wives married, our communions received, or our bishops consecrated.”[3] Implicit in this critique is an understanding of the intention in question as being mental or internal. However, it is disputed within the Church of Rome whether the intention said to be required of the minister is indeed internal, or merely external:

Generally speaking, the principle of the Roman Church is that this Intention is necessary. Thus, Aquinas says that if a man does not intend to minister the Sacrament and only does it in mockery the validity is at an end. The Council of Trent anathematises those who say that the intention of the minister to do what the Church does is not required. Subsequently a subtle distinction arose between internal and external Intention. The external Intention is the intention of the priest to administer the Sacrament in the customary form; the internal Intention is the intention to administer it in the sense of the Church. The only vital difference is as to the internal intention, and on this there is a difference in the Roman Church itself. The Ultramontane party has maintained the necessity of the internal intention, while the Gallican school have denied this.[4]

Aquinas affirms the necessity of external intention only. Moreover, he anticipates the objection of many Anglican commentators to the doctrine of Intention, namely that it casts doubt on all sacramental efficacy: “One man’s intention cannot be known to another. Therefore, if the minister’s intention were required for the validity of a sacrament, he who approaches a sacrament could not know whether he has received the sacrament. Consequently he could have no certainty in regard to salvation.”[5] He responds by invoking the above-mentioned distinction between internal intention and external intention:

On this point there are two opinions. For some hold that the mental intention of the minister is necessary; in the absence of which the sacrament is invalid…. Others with better reason hold that the minister of a sacrament acts in the person of the whole Church, whose minister he is; while in the words uttered by him, the intention of the Church is expressed; and that this suffices for the validity of the sacrament, except the contrary be expressed on the part either of the minister or of the recipient of the sacrament.[6]

There is nothing objectionable about the doctrine of Intention when the kind of “intention” required is external rather than internal. Indeed, Hooker himself says that “intent of the Church,” manifested externally, is required for sacramental efficacy: “What every man’s private mind is, as we cannot know, so neither are we bound to examine, therefore always in these cases the known intent of the Church generally doth suffice; and where the contrary is not manifest, we may presume that he which outwardly doth the work, hath inwardly the purpose of the Church of God.”[7] Hence, it has rightly been observed that “we may well be content with the dictum of S. Thomas Aquinas”[8] on this point, as Hooker is. When the requisite ministerial intention is understood in this external sense, there is no reason to fear that “a mental reservation on the part of the minister not to effect what the Church intends to effect in the sacrament will alone make the sacrament invalid.”[9]

Notes

  1. See also H. C. O’Donnoghue, A Familiar and Practical Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1816), 223; George Tomline, Elements of Christian Theology, 14th ed., vol. II (London: T. Cadell, 1843), 383; Thomas Rogers, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, ed. J. J. S. Perowne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1854), 271; T. P. Boultbee, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1871), 221; Robert Louis Cloquet, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1885), 444; John Macbeth, Notes on the Thirty-Nine Articles (London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., 1894), 145; Edgar C. S. Gibson, The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen and Co., 1898), 616‒17; B. J. Kidd, The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their History and Explanation (London: Rivington’s, 1899), 218; and W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles, 4th ed. (London: Church Book Room Press, 1951), 366, 368. ↑
  2. See also Gibson, Thirty-Nine Articles, 617. Others, however, have maintained that the Article was meant to respond to this doctrine. See, e.g., E. Tyrrell Green, The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Age of the Reformation, 2nd ed. (London: Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co., 1912), 164. ↑
  3. See also O’Donnoghue, Exposition, 224; Gilbert Burnet, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, ed. James R. Page (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1842), 387‒89; Tomline, Elements, 385; Boultbee, Exposition, 223; Cloquet, Exposition, 447‒48; Macbeth, Notes, 145‒46; and Green, Thirty-Nine Articles, 164‒65. ↑
  4. Thomas, Principles, 369. ↑
  5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.64.8 obj. 2, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Benzinger Brothers, 1920), https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4064.htm#article8. ↑
  6. Aquinas, ST III.64.8 ad. 2, https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4064.htm#article8. ↑
  7. Richard Hooker, Works, vol. I, ed. W. S. Dobson (London: G. Cowie and Co., 1825), 597‒98. ↑
  8. G. F. Maclear and W. W. Williams, An Introduction to the Articles of the Church of England (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895), 314. ↑
  9. Francis J. Hall, Anglican Dogmatics: Francis J. Hall’s Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2, ed. John A. Porter, Bk. VIII, The Church & The Sacramental System (Nashotah, WI: Nashotah House Press, 2021), 410n8. See also Darwell Stone, Outlines of Christian Dogma, 3rd ed. (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), 334‒35. Browne recognizes the distinction between internal intention and what he calls “an implicit intention in the minister, i. e. to do what the Church doth,” but he observes that “this distinction, which seems to have some justice in it, is easily drawn out so as [for the Romanists] to save themselves, and yet to enable them to condemn us,” particularly with regard to the validity of Anglican holy orders. ↑
James Clark
About

James Clark is the author of The Witness of Beauty and Other Essays, and the Book Review Editor at The North American Anglican. His writing has appeared in Cranmer Theological Journal, Journal of Classical Theology, and American Reformer, as well as other publications.

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