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Raymond E. Brown
from: Theological Studies 41 (1980) pp.
322-338.
While
Roman Catholics know the term episkopos very well, the attention given
recently to the term episkope may be puzzling. It appears chiefly in
ecumenical discussions as Christians seek to verbalize the fact that most
churches have fixed lines of authority and supervision, but only some churches
have bishops. Thus, when an episcopally structured church considers union with
a nonepiscopally structured church, another question should precede the obvious
question about the attitude of this other church toward having supervision in
the hands of one called an episkopos. The first question involves
detecting in the existing structure of the other church elements of
episkope, i.e., supervision in matters pastoral, doctrinal, and
sacramental. It is necessary to realize that there can be episkope
without an episkopos, and that even in episcopally. structured
churches not all episkope is in the hands of the episkopoi
Because the NT is quite instructive on this score, I have been called upon
for information in several recent ecumenical enterprises. I took part in the
background discussions preparatory to the report by the U.S. Bishops’
Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs made to the National Council
of Catholic Bishops on “Bilateral Discussions concerning Ministry.”
(1) We find there: “Episkopé (i.e., pastoral overseeing of a
community) in the New Testament is exercised in different ways by persons
bearing different names.” More recently the Faith and Order Commission of
the World Council of Churches, which is involved in revising its extremely
important collection of Agreed Statements on “One Baptism, One Eucharist,
and a Mutually Recognized Ministry,” recognized the need to amplify the
treatment of episcopacy found in the ministry section of the document. In
preparation for a meeting on this topic held in Geneva in August 1979, I was
asked as a member of the Faith and Order Commission to do a summary of
the NT evidence on the subject. (2) It may be of service to others who are
discussing the topic.
There
are several ways to approach this issue. If one considers the Greek vocabulary
most directly expressing the idea of supervision in the NT,(3) it is obvious
that those called episkopoi exercised some form of episkope-;
but so did others. Therefore I have thought it best to begin by tracing
supervision by other types of people in NT times, and then finally to come to
those who were called supervisors. In the NT only the Pastoral Epistles are
ex professo concerned with church structure, and undoubtedly there was
more supervision and supervisory structure than we know about. Since
second-century institutions and church officers were not a creatio ex
nihilo, studies of the post-NT period must also be made as complements to
and continuations of NT studies. However, it would be extremely dangerous to
assume that the second-century structures which are never mentioned in the NT
already existed in the first century. We must allow for the possibility of
development and of increasing structuralization as the great figures of the
early period became distant memories, and local churches had to survive on
their own.
The Twelve
In
Acts 1:20, Luke has Peter citing Ps 109(108):8: “His episkope- let
another take,” in reference to replacing Judas as a member of the Twelve.
This means that, as Luke looked back on the early Church from his position cu.
A.D. 80, the members of the Twelve were thought to have had a function of
supervising. What did that consist in?
All
the Gospels portray a group of the Twelve existing during Jesus’ ministry,
and 1 Cor 15:5 implies that they were in existence by the time of the
Resurrection appearances. Therefore there is little reason to doubt that Jesus
chose the Twelve. Why did he do this? We have only one saying attributed to
Jesus himself about the purpose of the Twelve: he had chosen them to sit on
(twelve) thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt 19:28; Lk
22:28-30).(4) The idea seems to have been that in the renewed Israel which
Jesus was proclaiming there were to be twelve men, just as there were twelve
sons of Jacob/Israel at the beginnings of the original Israel. The Dead Sea
Scrolls community of the New Covenant adopted the same symbolism, for they had
a special group of twelve in their Community Council (lQS 8:1).
Besides the role attributed to the Twelve by Jesus himself, the Evangelists
describe them as being given a missionary task, e.g., “to be sent out to
preach and to have authority over demons” (Mk 3:14-15; 6:7).(5) In
particular, during the ministry of Jesus Mt 10:5-6 has the Twelve being sent to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and after the Resurrection Mt 28:16-20
has them (minus Judas) being told to go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them and teaching them. Nevertheless, we do not know that in fact all
or most of them did this, since all the references to the Twelve as a group
after the ministry of Jesus portray them in Jerusalem. Indeed, one gets the
impression that little was known of most of them as individuals, and by the
last third of the century the names of some of them were being confused and
forgotten.(6) Only the first four in all the lists of the Twelve, the two sets
of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John, have any significant role in the
NT. With or without Andrew they are portrayed as having a special role in the
ministry of Jesus (Mk 1:16-20; 5:37; 9:2; 13:3; 14:33). In Acts 3:1; 4:13;
8:14, Peter and John play a prominent role in early preaching; and Gal 2:9
shows Peter (Cephas) and John at Jerusalem in the year 49. James of Zebedee,
the brother of John, died a martyr’s death in the early 40’s (Acts
12:2). The only one of the Twelve ever pictured outside Palestine in the NT is
Peter, who went to Antioch (Gal 2:11) and perhaps to Corinth (1 Cor 1:12; 9:5).
Otherwise the NT is silent on the fate of the members of the Twelve.
The
image of them as carrying on missionary endeavors all over the world has no
support in the NT or in other reliable historical sources. The archeological
and later documentary evidence that Peter died at Rome is credible, but the
rest of the Twelve could have died in Jerusalem so far as we have trustworthy
information.
As
for exercising supervision, there is no NT evidence that any of the Twelve ever
served as heads of local churches; and it is several centuries before they
begin to be described as “bishops” of first-century Christian
centers, which is surely an anachronism. (7) According to Acts 6:2 and
15:ó, the Twelve exercised a type of collective influence in meetings
that decided church policy. The Twelve are regarded as having a foundational
role, either collectively as their names appear on the twelve foundations of
the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:14), or in the person of Peter (Mt 16: 18), or
with Peter and John as two of the pillars (of the Church) in Gal 2:9. An
important text for supervisory authority is Mt 18:18, where the disciples
(probably the Twelve) are given the power to bind and loose, whether that means
admitting to the community or making binding regulations. This power is given
specifically to Peter in Mt 16:19; and in Acts 5:1-6 we find him striking down
unworthy members of the community. Also in Jn 21:15-17 Peter is told by Jesus
to feed or pasture Jesus’ sheep.(8) Thus there is the image of a
collective policy-making authority for the Twelve in the NT; and in the case of
Peter, the best known of the Twelve, the memory of pastoral responsibility.
Otherwise the NT is remarkably vague about the kind of supervision exercised by
members of the Twelve.
The Hellenist Leaders and James of Jerusalem
Acts
6:1-6 is a key scene in telling us how Luke understood supervision in the early
Church. The Christians in Jerusalem are becoming numerous; and a dispute has
broken out whereby one group of Jewish Christians (Hebrews), who exercise
control of community goods, is shutting off aid to the widows as the most
vulnerable members of the other group of Jewish Christians (Hellenists).(9) The
basis of the dispute was probably theological, stemming from the
negative Hellenist attitude toward the Temple (to be revealed in Stephen’s
sermon in Acts 7:47-51). The Twelve summon the common Christian assembly called
“the multitude,(10) and they discuss the problem. According to Luke,
therefore, by the mid-30’s there has already developed some structure for
handling the common goods and also a deliberative assembly. But now more formal
administration is needed to deal with a larger and less harmonious membership.
There
are three results from this scene:
(1) Even to settle the dispute, the
Twelve will not take over the distribution of community goods: “It is not
right that we should give up preaching the word of God in order to serve
tables.” The fact that this is mentioned as a refused possibility means
that the Twelve have not been taking care of food distribution. The decision of
the Twelve to avoid becoming administrators of the local church confirms the
statement made above that none of the Twelve is portrayed as a local church
supervisor in NT times.
(2) At the suggestion of Peter the Hellenists are
given their own administrators, whose (seven) names are listed in Acts 6:5. The
fact that this dispute has been centered on the distribution of food, described
demeaningly as “waiting [diakonein] on table,” has led to the
erroneous designation of the Hellenist leaders as deacons, with the
thought that they were the second-level church administrators mentioned in Phil
1:1 and the Pastorals. However, they seem to have been the top-level
administrators for the Hellenist Christians, who not only supervised the
distribution of the common goods but also preached and taught (as seen from
Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 and Philip’s activity in Acts 8).(11) They
are the first local church administrators encountered in the NT. We do not know
if they had a title, but aspects of the episkope- exercised by
presbyter-bishops later in the first century resemble the tasks of the
Hellenist leaders.
(3) We are not told in Acts 6 that the Hebrew section of
the Jerusalem community received a corresponding set of administrators, but
subsequent information in Acts causes us to suspect that they did. In Acts
11:30 we find a reference to a group of presbyters ( presbyteroi) who
are in charge of the common food of the Jerusalem/Judean church—a church
from which the Hellenists have been driven out by Jewish persecution.(12)
The
structure of the Jerusalem church needs special attention. The presbyters are
consistently mentioned alongside the “apostles” (Acts 15:
2,4,6,22,23; 16:4), a term which for Luke means the Twelve. This twin set of
Christian authorities has parallels to Luke’s description of a twin set of
Jewish authorities: the rulers of the people and the presbyters/elders (Acts
4:5,8), or the high priests and the presbyters/elders (Acts 23:14; 25: 15).
While this parallelism may stem from Luke, it is not unlikely that the Jewish
Christians of Jerusalem took over the idea of presbyters from the Jewish
synagogue. Occasionally Luke singles out on the Jewish side a spokesman, e.g.,
a high priest such as Annas or Ananias, alongside the presbyters/elders (Acts
24:1; see 4:6); so also on the Christian side he singles out James in a
presiding role among the presbyters (Acts 21:18). Luke does not identify this
James, but surely he is the James whom Paul (Gal 1:19) locates at Jerusalem and
calls “the brother of the Lord” and an apostle.(13) His importance is
clear in Gal 2:9, where he is listed ahead of Peter/Cephas and John (two
members of the Twelve) among the reputed pillars of the Jerusalem church. He
took a leading role in the discussions at Jerusalem ca. A.D. 49 about the
admission of Gentiles as Christians without their being circumcised, and also
in subsequent attempts to bind these Gentiles to Jewish food laws (Acts
15:13-21, 23-29; Gal 2:2,12). The contention that he succeeded Peter as leader
of the Jerusalem church is based on the misconception that Peter was the local
leader of the church in Jerusalem. According to Acts, the Twelve did exercise a
type of leadership in the Jerusalem church in the early days when that church
constituted all of Christendom, and Peter was the spokesman of the Twelve. But
Acts 6:2 shows Peter on behalf of the Twelve refusing administration properly
understood when that became necessary because of numbers and complexity. Thus
it is more correct to say that from the moment that the Jerusalem church needed
precise supervision, James along with the presbyters played that role. That
James was remembered as a person who exercised supervision over a church is
confirmed by the Epistle of James. Whether or not it was written by him, such
an epistle with its instruction about behavior, teaching, and prayer life was
thought to be attributable to him by the person who did write it. In the
mid-30’s, then, it would appear that the need was recognized for local
supervision of the Hebrew and Hellenist communities in Jerusalem (l4) and was
met in two different ways, respec tively, by James and the presbyters
and by the seven Hellenist authorities. Each of these supervisory groups would
have managed the distribution of the common funds, made decisions affecting the
life style of Christians, and entered into discussion about church policy as
regards converts. The urging of the common assembly by the Twelve (Acts 6:3)
which led to this development is the closest the Twelve ever come in the NT to
appointing local church leaders.
The Pauline Apostle
In
Paul’s view, inevitably refracted through his own situation, apostles were
those who were sent out by the risen Jesus to proclaim the gospel, even at the
price of suffering and persecution. Clearly from 1 Cor 15:5-7 “all the
apostles” were a more numerous group than the Twelve, and it is likely
that this notion of apostle was ancient and more widespread than the Pauline
sphere. The 1 Cor 15 formula is generally considered, at least in part, to be
pre-Pauline. The idea of the missionary apostle was so well established that it
was applied to the Twelve by those who considered them apostles.(l5) For
instance, Mt 28:16-20 has the risen Jesus giving to the Twelve (Eleven) a
mission to the whole earth (also Acts 1:8), even though historically it cannot
be shown that many of the Twelve functioned outside Jerusalem.(l6)
If
Paul is taken as an example of the missionary apostle, his letters supply many
examples of apostolic supervision: he teaches, he exhorts, he reproves, and he
exercises judgment against bad members of a church. In 2 Cor 13:2 he implies
that, when present, the apostle could punish directly without need for
consulting the community; and 2 Thess 3:14 orders anyone to be ostracized who
refuses to obey the apostle’s instructions conveyed by letter.
Nevertheless, despite relatively long periods spent by Paul at Corinth and
Ephesus, the apostle is not a local, residential church leader.
Even
from the earliest days of the Pauline mission, there were local church leaders
who functioned while the apostle was alive. About A.D. 50 Paul told the
Thessalonians whom he had converted a few months before (1 Thess 5:12):
“Respect those who labor among you and are over you [proistamenoi]
in the Lord.” Philippians (1:1) is addressed to the episkopoi
and diakonoi, a proof that the title “supervisor” was
already in use by A.D. 60; and 1 Cor 12:28 lists
“administrations” or governance (kybernesis) as a charism at
Corinth. But our knowledge of local supervision during Paul’s lifetime is
quite limited. Among the things we do not know are the following: Did
the local leaders at the various Pauline churches differ in terms of the
authority they exercised and the roles they played? Did they all have titles
and were the titles uniform? Was theirs a true office held for a set or long
period of time? What precisely did they do? Were they appointed by Paul, or
were they elected by the local community, or did they come forward feeling
themselves to be possessors of a charism? The appearance of leaders at
Thessalonica within such a short time after Paul’s evangelizing makes it
quite plausible that sometimes he arranged for local leadership before he left
a community. The Lucan statement in Acts 14:23 that Barnabas and Paul appointed
“presbyters in every church” is probably anachronistic in the title
it gives and in the universality of the practice,(l7) but probably quite
correct in that during his lifetime Paul sometimes appointed local church
leaders in communities he evangelized. No matter what supervision such leaders
exercised, they were still subject to the overarching supervision of the
apostle, who could issue commands in all the churches (1 Cor 7:17) and had a
daily care for all the churches touched by his mission (2 Cor 11:28). The
supervision of the local church leader was modified in another way by the
presence of other charisms in the community. In 1 Cor 12:28 the charism of
administrators is mentioned only after many others: “first apostles,
second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers,
helpers, administrators.” We do not know how such figures as
prophets, teachers, and administrators were interrelated in the supervision of
a community.
While
the authority of the apostle seems to have been the highest (under Christ) in
the churches of his mission, there is evidence that a rivalry could develop
when different apostles worked in the same community. At Corinth (1 Cor 1:12)
there is trouble when some proclaim adherence to Paul, others to Apollos,
others to Cephas. In 2 Cor 11:5 Paul is sarcastic about the efforts of
“superapostles” in a church he founded. Such danger of conflicting
authority causes him to avoid building upon another man’s foundation (Rom
15:20), although others build upon his foundation (1 Cor 3:10). It becomes
important, then, that the various apostles preach the same gospel:
“Whether then it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed”
(1 Cor 15:11). Differences of view are especially serious when they occur
between an apostle like Paul and a member of the Twelve like Peter or the head
of the Jerusalem church, James the brother of the Lord. Although Paul is
critical of the status of such “pillars”—"What they were makes
no difference to me" (Gal 2: 6,9)—he recognizes that in one way or another
they have enough power to render his efforts vain.(l8) And so it is important
that these figures extend the right hand of fellowship to Paul (Gal 2:7-9). All
of this means that in facing a major problem, like that of converting the
Gentiles without requiring circumcision, figures with a different type of
supervision (Paul, James, Peter) all had a say in the outcome. Moreover,
despite agreement on the main issue, they might well continue to disagree on
other issues, e.g., on the obligation of the Gentiles to keep the Jewish food
laws. Peter, who had been under the influence of Paul, changed his stance when
men from James challenged his behavior at Antioch (Gal 2 12), seemingly because
Antioch was within James’s sphere of influence as regards such matters of
Christian interrelations. According to Acts 15: 20,23 the policy of binding the
Gentiles by Jewish food laws was advocated by James and put into force for
Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. But Paul did not insist on such a policy in the
churches of his mission (1 Cor 8) However, if Acts 21:23 is historical, even
though Paul may have felt free to have one policy in Corinth while James had
another in Jerusalem and Antioch, when Paul came to Jerusalem he may have had
to follow James’s policy on Jewish obligations. Thus, when we speak of
supervision exercised by the three best-known figures of the ancient Church, we
have to recognize that the NT itself shows different areas of competence (both
geographical and topical) for Peter, the first-listed and spokesman of the
Twelve, for James, the brother of the Lord and leader of the Jerusalem (mother)
church, and for Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.
The Presbyter-Bishops and the Succession to the Apostles
If
many of the Pauline churches had local leaders in the apostle’s lifetime
(some of whom at least had been appointed by him), the question of local-church
leadership became a major concern in the last third of the century, after the
death of the great apostles in the 60’s.(19) We see this in (the Pastoral
Epistles,(20) where Titus (1:5) has been left in Crete “to set in order
what was wanting and to appoint presbyters in each city.” To facilitate
such appointments, the qualifications of an episkopos, “supervisor,
bishop,” are listed (Titus 1:7-11; 1 Tim 3:1-7). The very fact that Titus
has to be told to do this means that there were not yet presbyter-bishops in
all the churches of the Pauline mission and confirms the suspicion that Luke
was anachronistic when he said that in the late 40’s Barnabas and Paul
appointed presbyters in every church (Acts 14:23). Luke was probably describing
what was going on in the churches at the very time that he was writing Acts
(80’s).
We
may begin our treatment of this period by noting that the Pastorals are meant
to give authority to Timothy and Titus, companions of Paul, to structure
churches, even as the apostle is disappearing from the ecclesiastical scene (2
Tim 4:6). There was, then, a period of postapostolic supervision by
second-generation apostolic delegates who acted in the name of the apostle on
the grounds that they had accompanied him and knew his mind.(21) There must
have been resistance to such apostolic delegates. (If the Pastorals are
pseudonymous, Paul is being summoned from the grave to still the resistance.)
In 1 Tim 4:12 Paul is pictured as encouraging Timothy not to let himself be
despised and, in 2 Tim 1:6, to rekindle the gift of God that is within him
through the laying on of Paul’s hands. Such apostolic delegates would have
constituted an intermediary stage between that of the apostle’s great
personal authority over the churches founded by him (40’s-60’s) and
the period when the local church leaders became the highest authorities (second
century). We know by name only a few of these second-generation apostolic
delegates who exercised quasi-apostolic authority. Were there also
third-generation apostolic delegates, i.e., disciples of the disciples of the
apostles, who were not local bishops? Eventually (and certainly by the second
century) there disappears the apostolic function of not being closely attached
to a local church while supervising a whole group of churches with a common
heritage. It was only in a partial way, then, that the local bishops succeeded
to the apostolic care for the churches. (Later, with the development of the
patriarchates and of the papacy, care for a larger group of churches found
again a vehicle of expression.) In all this one should note that in the NT
succession in pastoral care is to the apostles in the Pauline sense. The idea
that the Twelve were apostles (and eventually that they were the only apostles
to be reckoned with) would ultimately lead to the understanding that they were
the apostles to whom the local church leaders succeeded. In the NT, however,
the Twelve are never described as being the first to bring Christianity to an
area and in that sense establish a local church; and so the NT never raises the
issue of succession to their pastoral care.(22)
Moving on from the apostolic delegates to the local church leaders described in
the Pastorals, we find that in these letters there have emerged established
offices for which qualifications are given (1 Tim 3; Titus 1). Some of the
qualifications are institutional, so that no matter what abilities a person may
have, that person can be rejected because of stipulations that are only
secondarily related to what the person will be doing, e.g., no recent convert
nor a person who has been married a second time is eligible to be a presbyter.
This factor, plus the idea of appointment of presbyter-bishops by an apostolic
delegate, means that personally experienced or claimed charisms have ceded to
community acknowledgment in determining who shall have supervision.
Unfortunately, outside of these three letters which deal with apostolic
delegates, we know very little about how communities at this period did
determine who would have supervision. Didache 15:1 indicates that the
community itself could select leaders; but in other areas and times it may well
have been that the leaders of sister-churches intervened, or that the
presbyter-bishops sought to have their own children succeed them. There is
nothing in the NT literature about a regular process of ordination. (And a
fortiori there is nothing to support the thesis that, by a chain of laying
on of hands, every local presbyter-bishop could trace a pedigree of
ordination back to “the apostles.”(23) Nor do we know whether church
offices were held for a limited time or for life.
Let us
now turn to the designation of local church officials.(24) In the Pastorals
there are two offices set up for the pastoral care of the community, a higher
office and a subordinate office. If we invoke wider NT evidence, it seems that
the holder of each of these offices had two designations, respectively, the
presbyter (elder) or bishop, and the “younger” or deacon. One
document may speak exclusively of episkopoi, “bishops,” and
diakonoi, “deacons” (Phil 1:1), while another document may
speak of presbyteroi, “elders,” and neoteroi,
“youngers” (1 Pet 5:1,5). Still other passages illustrate the
interchangeability of the respective titles. The interchangeability of
presbyteros and episkopos is seen not only in the Pastorals
(Titus 1:5-7; 1 Tim 3:1; 5:17) but also in Acts 20:28, where those who have
previously been designated as the presbyteroi of the church of Ephesus
are told, “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy
Spirit has made you episkopoi to shepherd the church of God.”
Similarly, in 1 Pet 5:2-3 Peter addresses himself to the presbyteroi,
“Feed the flock, being supervisors (episkopountes) not by
coercion but willingly.”(25) The interchangeability of neoteros and
diakonos is attested by the parallelism in Lk 22:16: “Let the great
one among you become as a neoteros; let the one who rules become as a
diakonos.” The fact that neoteros, “younger,” is
not simply an age bracket (any more than is presbyteros,
“elder”) but another name for the subordinate office(26) has
frequently been missed, resulting in strange combinations, e.g., while the
reference in 1 Pet 5:1-4 to presbyteroi has rightly been understood as a
designation not simply for elderly men but for the holders of presbyteral
office, the next verse (5:5) is thought to shift with its neoteroi to
the theme of youth!
If we
concentrate on the higher office, it has often been suggested that one title,
presbyteros, was in use among Jewish Christian communities, while the
other, episkopos, was in use in the Gentile churches. However, the
evidence that we have for the use of presbyteros among Jewish Christians
comes from Acts’ account of the Jerusalem community (see section above on
Hellenist Leaders and James of Jerusalem), and the same book describes the
officials of the Gentile Christian communities as presbyteroi too (Acts
14:23; 20:17). A more plausible theory is that we have here a reflection of two
strains of Judaism which came into Christianity. The synagogues of Pharisaic
Judaism had a group of zeqenîm, “elders,” the Hebrew
equivalent of presbyteroi, forming a council whose members set policy
but were not pastors responsible for the spiritual care of individuals. In
addition to such zeqenîm, the Dead Sea Scrolls community of the
New Covenant had officials who bore the title mebaqqer or paqid,
synonymous words meaning “supervisor, overseer,” the Hebrew
equivalent of episkopos. These functionaries, assigned one to a group,
did have pastoral responsibility. The higher of the two Christian offices
described in the Pastorals may have combined the group of presbyters from the
Pharisaic synagogue with the supervisor of Jewish sectarianism so that the
presbyters served also in a supervisory capacity. This origin would explain why
in Titus 1:5 presbyteroi are spoken of in the plural, while in 1:7,
obviously referring to the same office, the author describes the episkopos
in the singular. Furthermore, while our NT evidence points to a general
interchangeability between the titles presbyteros and episkopos,
it is possible that not all the presbyters of a community assumed the title
and role of the supervisor. In 1 Tim 5:17 we are told that a double honor is
due to “those presbyters who rule well."(27) Does the author mean that,
while all the presbyters rule, only some rule well, or that only some
presbyters rule? The latter seems more plausible, since he goes on in the same
verse to single out those presbyters ”who labor in preaching and
teaching," which surely means that not all had those tasks. The body of
presbyters, then, may have divided up among themselves tasks once handled by
people with different charisms, e.g., by the teachers and administrators of 1
Cor 12:28. It is well known that Ignatius of Antioch gives witness to the
(recent) emergence of a threefold-office structure m certain communities: one
episkopos, under him a group of presbyteroi and a group of
diakonoi (a structure nowhere clearly attested in the NT), so that the
title episkopos is now no longer widely interchangeable with
presbyteros. However, in light of the discussion above, attention should
be paid to Polycarp, Philippians 5:3, for there neoteroi are told
to be subject to both presbyters and deacons. Just as ultimately presbyters
became subject to bishops, so neoteroi became subordinate to
diakonoi; and it seems that at least for a brief period the two sets of
terms yielded four offices or roles.
That
the term diakonos could be applied to a woman is known from Rom 16:1.25
In the passage on deacons in 1 Tim 3:8-13, rules are laid down for women in
3:11, and some have argued that these are the wives of the deacons. (However,
the clear reference to the deacon’s wife in 3:12 may be introducing a new
but related topic.) Whether they are or not, they surely serve as deacons,
since the author speaks of the rules for them as similar to the roles for
(male) deacons. In view of the high plausibility, that there were men and women
deacons in the churches of the Pastorals, and that neoteros was another
term for diakonos, a passage in 1 Tim 5:1-2 raises the question of
whether there were also both men and women presbyters.(29) The apostolic
delegate is told by “Paul” how to treat presbyters and
“youngers”: “Do not rebuke a presbyteros but exhort him
as you would a father, and the neoteroi as you would brothers;
presbyterai as you would mothers, and neoterai as you would
sisters.” It is most often assumed that age brackets are meant, and indeed
neoterai refers to younger women who are widows in 5:11,14.
Nevertheless, every other passage dealing with presbyteros in the
Pastorals is taken to refer to officeholders, including two passages in this
same chapter of 1 Timothy (5:17,19). This argument is offset by the fact that
the parallel passage in Titus 2:1-6 (which speaks of the male presbytes
and neoteros and the female presbytis and nea) deals
with age groups. But we can say that if there were women presbyters as
there were women deacons, it should be remembered that not all presbyters seem
to have ruled (i.e., served as an episkopos). The prohibition in 1 Tim
2:12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over
men,” may have been thought all the more necessary if women held an office
that allowed many of its male occupants to teach and rule.
What
were the precise supervisory roles of the presbyter-bishops and the
neoteroi-deacons? Only the qualifications, not the activities, of the deacons
are given in 1 Tim 3:8-13; and so we know nothing about what they did.(30)
Since the name diakonos describes a servant, perhaps the deacon in NT
times really did not exercise much supervision. As for the presbyter-bishops,
we know that some or many taught (1 Tim 5:17). In particular, they are
associated with refuting false doctrine and protecting the purity of community
faith (Titus 1:9). From the insistence that the presbyter-bishop must be able
to manage his own household, being no lover of money (1 Tim 3:3-5; also 1 Pet
5:2, “not for shameful gain”), and from the rhetorical question,
“If someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care
for the Church of God?” (1 Tim 3:5), we may suspect that presbyters had
responsibilities toward the common goods of the community. The image of the
shepherd appears frequently for the presbyter-bishop (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet 5:2),
and so his supervising authority was like that of a shepherd over sheep,
feeding, guiding, and protecting. It is scarcely accidental that in the Dead
Sea Scrolls community of the New Covenant similar roles were assigned to the
“supervisor” (CD 13:7-19): he is like a shepherd over sheep; he
manages the common goods; he is a teacher and inspector of the doctrine of the
members of the community.
No
cultic or liturgical role is assigned to the presbyter-bishops in the
Pastorals. The closest to that in the NT is James 5:14-15, where the presbyters
of the church are called in to pray over the sick person and anoint him in the
name of the Lord, so that “the prayer of faith will save the sick
person.” This passage in James confirms the existence of presbyters in a
non-Pauline church of Jewish origins where the name of James (the brother of
the Lord) was venerated, and may be related to the information found in Acts
about James and the presbyters at Jerusalem. Another work, 1 Pet 5:1-4,
addressed to Gentile churches of northern Asia Minor, shows the existence of
presbyter-bishops in an area where evidently Peter was looked upon as an
authority.(3l) The idea that Peter spoke as a “fellow presbyter”
telling presbyters how to behave is not unlike that of Paul in the Pastorals
giving the qualifications for presbyter-bishops. Thus, in churches associated
with the three great apostolic figures of the NT, Paul, James, and Peter,
presbyters were known and established in the last third of the century.
In
the letters of Ignatius of Antioch the bishop has unique authority in relation
to baptism and the Eucharist, but we find no word of this in the NT. In
comparison with the silence as regards presbyter-bishops, various figures are
said to baptize, e.g., members of the Twelve (Mt 28:19; Acts 2: 41; 10:48),
Philip the Hellenist leader (Acts 8:38), and Paul the apostle (1 Cor
1:14-17—but “Christ did not send me to baptize”). As for the
Eucharist, we know virtually nothing of who presided in NT times. The
instruction “Do this” in commemoration of Jesus is given to the
Twelve in Lk 22:19 (1 Cor 11:24), but not in Mark/Matthew. According to Acts
13:2, in the church of Antioch prophets and teachers “liturgize”
(leitourgein). This finds an echo in Didache 10:7, “Allow
the prophets to ‘eucharistize’ [eucharistein] as they
will.”(32) Between the NT position, where prophets and teachers have a
liturgical role, and the Ignatian position, where bishops and presbyters have
that role, comes (logically and perhaps chronologically) the situation in
Didache.(33) In the church;addressed by that work there are still
prophets and teachers, with prophets conducting the Eucharist; yet the author
urges, “Appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons. . .for they are your
honorable men together with prophets and teachers” (Didache
15:1-2).
We
have spoken about churches that did have presbyter-bishops to- ward the end of
the first century; for other NT churches of that period, we do not know how
supervision was structured. Matthew has clear ideas on how authority is
properly exercised (18:15-18) but tells us nothing about the officials in the
church who might be doing this. He knows of Christian prophets (10:41) and of
Christian scribes (13:52); and so some have surmised that Matthew’s was a
community with prophets and scribes, but not yet presbyter-bishops and
neoteroi-deacons. This would be a stage of structure less developed as regards
office than that attested in Didache, a work that has Matthean
affinities. In any case, Matthew will not let those who teach be called rabbi,
for there is only one teacher, Christ. Nor will he let community members be
called leaders (pl. of kathegetes), for Christ is the only leader. Nor is
anyone to be called father (Mt 23:8-10). In this he differs from some other NT
texts where there are human teachers (1 Cor 12:28-29; Eph 4:11; 1 Tim 2:7) and
an apostle who describes himself as a father toward his community (1 Cor 4:15).
The fascination with developing structure and offices in the late first century
had its dangers, and Matthew was alert to these.
Supervision in the Johannine Community
Also
alert to the danger of human authorities were the Johannine writers.(34) Jn 21,
which most think of as a late Johannine addition to the Gospel, ascribes the
role of shepherd to Peter but not to the Beloved Disciple. This probably
means that the role of the human shepherd had not been part of the
community’s religious tradition and was only now coming in from the
outside (whence the need to assure the readers that Jesus authorized it). For
an earlier stage in the community history, the image of Jesus as the shepherd
(Jn 10) was sufficient.
The
author of 2-3 Jn (who probably wrote 1 Jn as well) calls himself “the
presbyter,” but in the three Epistles he does not exercise an authority
similar to that of the presbyters described in the Pastorals and Acts, who
teach and who ostracize those who advocate false doctrine. The Johannine
epistolary author is facing false doctrine on the part of those who have
seceded from the community (1 Jn 2:19), but the author cannot teach upon his
own authority that they are wrong. He tells his readers that they have no
need of teachers and should know what is false on the basis of anointing by the
Spirit (2:27). The secessionists have left, but there is no suggestion that the
author was able to expel them. And in 3 Jn 10, where the presbyter deals with
Diotrephes who rejects his authority, the most he can do is to threaten
“to bring up” before the community what Diotrephes is doing. All of
this makes sense in light of Jn 14:26, where the Paraclete is the one who
teaches the Christian all things, and every Christian possesses the Paraclete.
The author of the Epistles can, speak as part of a “we” who are the
witnesses to the Johannine tradition (1 Jn 1:1-4) and thus join himself to the
witness of the Beloved Disciple; but he cannot present himself as a teacher, as
his opponents seem to be doing. And if his opponents also claim to possess an
anointing by the Spirit, all he can respond is, “Test the Spirits” (1
Jn 4:1). When evidence for stricter authority appears in the Johannine
writings, namely, in 3 Jn, that authority is in opposition to the
presbyter. The Diotrephes of 3 Jn 9-10 is making himself first in the local
Johannine church, seemingly along the lines of the episcopal style advocated in
the letters of Ignatius of Antioch; and he is not allowing the presbyter to
send emissaries into the church. Some have thought that Diotrephes was
propounding false doctrine; but the epistolary author, who is so hard on the
secessionists, offers no doctrinal critique of Diotrephes. The latter may have
been on the same side doctrinally as the presbyter, but may have realized that
the presbyter’s trust that people would be led to the truth by the Spirit
was not working (as 1 Jn 4:5 concedes). Thus, from 3 Jn and from Jn 21 (Peter
as the shepherd) we may suspect that greater supervisory power of the
presbyter-bishop type, although foreign to the theological genius of the
Johannine community, was introduced over opposition into segments of that
community in order to resist false teaching.
This
survey shows that the manner and exercise of supervision varied greatly in the
different places and different periods within the first century or NT era. Only
at the end of the century and under various pressures was a more uniform
structure of church office developing. The death of the great leaders of the
early period in the 60’s left a vacuum; doctrinal divisions became
sharper; and there was a greater separation from Judaism and its structures. By
the 80’s-90’s the presbyter-bishop model was becoming widespread, and
with the adjustment supplied by the emergence of the single bishop that model
was to dominate in the second century until it became exclusive in the ancient
churches. Many of us see the work of the Holy Spirit in this whole process, but
even those who do must recognize that the author of 1 Clement is giving
overly simplified history(35) when he states 91 Clem.42) that the
apostles (seemingly the Twelve) who came from Christ appointed their first
converts to be bishops and deacons in local churches.
Notes
1.
Published in Interface (Spring 1979, no. 1) with the horrendous misprint
on p. 3: “... that the term [apostle] is now always to be equated with the
Twelve.” Read “not” for “now.”
2.
Let me emphasize that this is a brief NT survey. If others think of items I
have not mentioned, I respond only that I have listed all that I could find of
importance. There is no attempt to supply in the footnotes a bibliography on
episcopal ministry; one may consult A. Lemaire, Les ministères aux
origines de l’église (LD 68; Paris: Cerf, 1971); Le
m¿nistère et les ministères salon le Nouveau Testament,
ed. J. Delorme (Paris: Seuil, 1974); B. Cooke, Ministry to Word and
Sacraments (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976).
3.
The total NT occurrences of three pertinent NT words are as follows:
epishopein, “to supervise, oversee, inspect, care for,” 1 Pet
5:2, plus Heb 12:15, which is not directly relevant to our quest;
episkopë, “position of supervisor, function of supervising,
visit, visitation,” Acts 1:20; 1 Tim 3:1; plus the not directly relevant
passages in Lk 19:44; 1 Pet 2:12; episkopos, “supervisor, overseer,
superintendent, bishop,” Acts 20:28; Phil 1:1; 1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7;1 Pet
2:25.
4. In
the 1976 Declaration “On the Question of the Admission of Women to the
Ministerial Priesthood” by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith (USCC publication, p. 25) there is a most curious passage. In discussing
“the attitude of Christ,” the Declaration discounts the force of this
saying of Jesus for several reasons: (1) Its symbolism is not mentioned by Mark
and John. Since when is the antiquity of “Q” material called into
question by its absence in Mark (since that is by definition the nature of
“Q” material) or rnirabile dicta by its absence in John? (2)
It does not appear in the context of the caU of the Twelve, but “at a
relatively late stage of Jesus’ public life.” However, it has been a
commonplace in scholarship, explicitly recognized in the 1964 Instruction of
the Pontifical
Biblical Commission on “The Historical Truth of the Gospels,” that
the Gospel material is not arranged in historical order; and so late occurrence
of a statement in the existing order of Matthew and Luke tells us absolutely
nothing about the attitude of Christ or when he said it in relation to the
Twelve. (3) The essential meaning of the choosing of the Twelve is to be found
in the words of Mk 3:14: “He appointed Twelve; they were to be his
companions and to be sent out to preach.” These words (which are words of
Mark and not of Jesus) tell us how Mark understood the role of the Twelve; they
most certainly may not be used to overrule the words of Jesus himself in
determining “the attitude of Christ” toward the Twelve! Fortunately
it is a firm principle in theology that loyal acceptance of a Roman document
does not require that one approve the reasons offered.
5. It
is debatable whether there was a historical mission during the ministry, or to
what extent the Gospel description of it has been colored by the later image of
the Twelve as apostles in the postresurrectional Christian missionary
enterprise.
6.
“Judas of James” appears in the lists of the Twelve in Luke and Acts,
“Thaddaeus” in the Marcan list, and “Lebbaeus” in
significant textual witnesses to the Matthean list (Mt 10:3). The facile claim
that these are three names for the one man may be challenged by the invitation
to supply examples of one man bearing three Semitic names, none of which is a
patronymic.
7. In
particular, D. W. O’Connor, Peter in Rome (New York: Columbia
Univ., 1969) 207, contends that the idea that Peter served as the first bishop
of Rome can be traced back no further than the third century. We have no
convincing evidence that the custom of having a single bishop prevailed in Rome
before the middle of the second century.
8.
One of the two Greek verbs in this passage, poimainein, involves guiding,
feeding, and guarding. However, it should be underlined that Peter cannot call
the sheep his own; they remain Jesus’ sheep.
9.
The likelihood is that the Hellenists were Jews (by birth or conversion) who
spoke only Greek (whence the name) and were heavily acculturated in the
Greco-Roman society (the totally Greek names of the seven leaders). The
particular group of Hellenists described in Acts 6 had come to believe in
Jesus.
10.
Plethos in Acts 6:2,5 and 15:12,30 seems to be technical designation,
related to Qumran terminology where the community meeting was called a
“Session of the Many” (lQS 6:8ff.).
11.
Although the Greek text is not certain, Acts 11:19-20 implies that Hellenists,
scattered in the persecution that arose over Stephen, began the mission to the
Gentiles (Hellenes).
12.
Acts 8:1 indicates the selective nature of the persecution of Christians: the
apostles (and presumably the Hebrew Christians) were left untouched (since they
conducted no campaign against worship in the Temple), while the Hellenist
Christians were scattered and pursued.
13.
It is not absolutely clear that the phrase “none of the other apostles
except James” calls James an apostle, but that is the easier reading. He
would be an apostle in the Pauline sense, where the term is not confined to the
Twelve. In light of the clear distinction between the Twelve and brothers of
the Lord (Acts 1:13-14; 1 Cor 15:5,7), he was not one of the Twelve and
therefore probably not an apostle by Lucan standards.
14.
Acts 6:1-6 is treated as having a historical substratum even by scholars not
overly inclined to trust Lucan historicity. The division it portrays runs
against the Lucan emphasis on one-mindedness, and it agrees with what we know
about anti-Temple movements among Jewish groups.
15.
There are many different views of apostles in the NT, and it is not possible to
trace a universally valid linear development. But as regards the Twelve, the
following is at least plausible: the Twelve were considered as apostles; then
came the expression the “Twelve Apostles” in the sense that they were
the apostles par excellence because they had been called by the earthly Jesus
as well as commissioned by the risen Jesus; then “the Twelve
Apostles” in an exclusive sense. The last stage dominates in Luke, for
only in Acts 14:4,14 does Luke ever call anyone else “apostle,”
namely, Barnabas and Paul.
16.
Whether Paul would have agreed that most of the Twelve were apostles by his
missionary standards is not known (he never calls them apostles). On the one
hand, he knows that they saw the risen Jesus (1 Cor 15:5); on the other hand,
there is no evidence that many of them went out to preach the gospel. In any
case, he certainly recognized Peter as an apostle (Gal 2:7).
17.
One may support this conclusion from a convergence of scattered evidence: from
the instructions that had to be given to Titus (1:5) in the Pastorals; from the
failure to mention bishops in the Corinthian correspondence where it would have
been logical to invoke their aid; from the failure to mention presbyters in any
undisputed Pauline letter; from the need of Clement in I Corinthians 42-44 to
strengthen the episcopate/presbyterate by giving it a pedigree; from the
evidence of Didache 15 that only gradually did bishops and deacons take
over the functions of prophets and teachers (mentioned in 1 Cor 12:28; Eph
4:11).
18.
The text in Gal 2:2 certainly does not mean that his gospel would have to be
acknowledged as wrong if they disagreed with him, for Gal 1:8 excludes that
possibility. Rather, refusal by Peter, James, and John to accept the Gentiles
without circumcision would have ruined Paul’s efforts to keep the Gentile
churches in communion with the Jewish churches.
19.
The only apostles about whom we have much biographical information in the NT
are the three mentioned at the end of the preceding paragraph (Peter, James,
and Paul), all of whom died in the mid-60’s.
20.
Between 80% and 90% of scholarship today would regard the Pastorals as
DeuteroPauline, written after Paul’s death. However, there is little
agreement as to whether they belong in the late-first or early-second century.
Personally, I see little reason for dating them later than the 80’s and
find it very difficult to believe that the situation they describe is not
several decades earlier than that addressed by Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 110).
The author may be saying to his times what he thinks Paul would have said were
Paul alive.
21.
There is no indication that we are to think of Titus and Timothy as
presbyter-bishops; theirs is a semiapostolic role. The use of 2 Tim 1:6
(“Rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my
hands") as evidence for the apostolic (Pauline) ordination of bishops is very
questionable.
22.
See, however, the discussion of 1 Peter below, n. 31.
23.
For ecumenical purposes, a study should be made on how the impression has been
created (erroneously in my judgment) that such a “tactile” succession
is a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.
24.
It is not germane to this paper on church supervision to discuss other
community roles or orders recognized in the Pastorals (and other NT works),
e.g., widows and virgins, since they are not recorded as having exercised
“supervision.”
25.
The episkopountes is textually dubious, since it is missing from Codex
Vaticanus and from the original hand of Sinaiticus.
26. A
seminal treatment of this subject is that of J. H. Elliott, “Ministry and
Church Order in the NT: A Traditio-Historical Analysis (1 Pt 5, 1-5 and
plls.),” CBQ 32 (1970) 367-91.
27.
“Rule” is the participial form proestotes, from proistemi, the
verb used for church leaders in 1 Thess 5:12.
28.
In my judgment, it is better to speak of female deacons than of deaconesses, a
term which can be confused with a later church institution that did not have
the ordained status of the deacon.
29.
Aquila and Prisca offer the example of a man and a woman in roles that might be
considered presbyteral, e.g., they have a house church in their home (1 Cor
16:19) and they “took” Apllos and instructed him in the way of God
(Acts 18:26).
30.
That the deacons waited upon table is an idea stemming from the false
assumption that deacons were involved in Acts 6:1-6. The deacon Phoebe is an
apostolic “helper” (Rom 16:2: prostatis—see n. 27 above)
to Paul and others.
31.
Letters of pastoral concern, closely similar to Pauline style, attributed to
Peter, portray him as having an apostolic care for specific churches and
confirm the observation that of the Twelve Peter came closest to the Pauline
notion of an apostle.
32.
Association of the prophet with the Eucharist is not so strange when we realize
that the NT prophets, men and women, often know and predict the future; and the
Eucharist was thought to proclaim “the Lord’s death until he
comes” (1 Cor 11:26).
33. A
chronology that has considerable plausibility in my mind is ca. 80-90 for the
Pastorals, ca. 100 for the Didache, and 110 for the Ignatian letters.
34.
Increasingly the view that two different writers were responsible for the
Gospel and the Epistles is gaining ground, with the possibility that the
epistolary author was the final redactor of the Gospel. A very high percentage
of critical scholars thinks that no Johannine work was written by one of the
Twelve or by the Beloved Disciple. The identity of the latter remains a
mystery, although it is plausible that he was a companion of Jesus, an
influential force in the comunity’s history, and a source for the
Evangelist.
35.
There are other instances of this in 1 Clement. Although the author
seems to know most of the Pauline letters, and although Paul speaks with
scarcely veiled contempt of “the so-called pillars” of the Church
(James, Cephas/Peter, John), 1 Clem.5:2-4 does not hesitate to designate
Peter and Paul as “most righteous pillars” of the Church!
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