The Columba Declaration und episkopalistische Ekklesiologie. Hoffnung für Meissen nach Porvoo im Hinblick auf das 'Historische Bischofsamt'?

Anglo-Catholic influence in the 19th and 20th centuries saw the Church of England establish a policy insisting on the 'historic episcopate' – with a succession as condition for the interchangeability of ordained ministers as an expression of full apostolicity and catholicity (episcopal[ian] ecclesiology). Against this background, the Church of England refused to fully recognise the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland in Meissen (1988/91), whereas in Porvoo (1992), some Baltic and Scandinavian Lutherans were afforded at least the intention towards succession. Recently, the (episcopalian) Church of England and the (presbyterian) Church of Scotland issued the Columba Declaration that envisages mutual recognition of ordained ministers. Time will tell whether the method to be implemented in such a process will establish an unqualified ecclesiological recognition of 'non-episcopal(ian)' partners again in the Church of England without an act of 'reconciliation' which could be understood as (conditional) episcopal(ian) consecrations or ordinations as a concession to a (quasi-)sacramental understanding of a succession and without insistence on an episcopal(ian) polity in future ordinations of the Scottish Kirk.