Thomas M. Lindsay · 11 of 17

Chapter VI. The Fall of the Prophetic Ministry and the Conservative Revolt. · Part 2

The middle of the second century, however, witnessed a change which may be best indicated by saying that the Christian faith was attracting to it multitudes of people drawn from all classes and ranks in society—imperial officials, merchants, lawyers, men of culture and leisure. It was gathering round it men from the camp and from the court, men who were in the midst of the bustle of life and who meant to remain there. Tertullian might prove that no soldier could be a Christian, and collections of ecclesiastical canons of a still later date might corroborate him, but he himself gives evidence that there must have been many Christians in the army. He speaks of the way in which the Christians mingled with their pagan neighbours. “We sojourn with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, nor shambles, nor bath, nor booth nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, nor any other place of commerce. We sail with you, we fight with you, and till the ground with you; and in like manner we unite with you in your traffickings.”

A question of the utmost gravity faced the leaders of the Christian societies. Should all the new classes of converts be permitted to remain in their callings, and—for this was the question involved—should the Church accept the new condition of things, and begin to adapt itself to the forms and conditions of the world around it? Should it, as far as conscience permitted, respect the amenities of life, or should it remain what it had hitherto been—a communion of persons who hoped for nothing from existing society, and who lived altogether apart from it? Much could be said on both sides. On the one hand, it could be urged that Christianity had a world-wide mission, and that if it could lay hold on the organization of the empire and use it for the extension of the knowledge of its Lord, it was only taking the path which Providence had plainly marked out for its progress. On the other hand, many Christians discerned the temptations which lay in accepting this view of the Church’s duty.

In the end the leaders of the Christian societies seem to have spontaneously and gradually come to see that it was their duty to bring their followers into what accommodation was possible with the conditions of existing society. It was this feeling that rendered the writings of the apologists possible. The time of enthusiasm had passed away for the great majority of Christians. Unimpassioned conviction took the place of the earlier almost unrestrained passion of faith. One can scarcely fancy Ignatius of Antioch writing in the tone of cool argument which characterises the apologists.

The change of moral and intellectual atmosphere did not suit the prophetic ministry, which had been the enthusiastic element from the beginning, and had become the element of asceticism. It was unavoidable that it should lose its old place and its ancient power. Pleasant things continued to be said about prophets, provided only they accepted a position under the office-bearers of the local churches. Curious regulations appear in some of the ancient canons, enjoining the people to respect their utterances. In the ancient Syrian collection known as the Testamentum Jesu Christi, for example, those who despise prophecy are debarred from coming to the Holy Supper, but the prophets were no longer the superior ministry in the churches.

There is also evidence leading us to believe that the prophetic ministry had been deteriorating. From the very beginning men had claimed to be included within its ranks who were not true prophets. Warnings against such persons are to be found within the New Testament writings, and they occur, and with increasing strength, in writers of the second century. We have seen them in the Didache. Justin Martyr cites their presence in the Church as a proof that Christianity is the true development of Judaism, because the Christians have among them false prophets as well as true ones like the ancient Israel. Hermas has given expressive pictures of the true and the false prophets. All this was a sign of the times.

These various influences combined to help forward the revolution which excluded the prophetic ministry from its earlier position of supremacy and installed the local official ministry in the supreme place of rule. They worked slowly and surely during the second century, and especially during the first half of the period.

But while this movement was going on, and its effects on the prophetic ministry were gradually manifesting themselves, protesting voices were raised. This movement fostered by the official ministry of the local churches was a departure, it seemed to many, from the traditions of the Church which they had in reverence; and it was accompanied by a relaxation of the stern rule of Christian life under which the earlier generations had lived and died. The prophetic ministry had always been considered as the direct gift of God to the Church. It was the ministry from above. It had been placed by St. Paul second only to the apostolate. Souls had been won from heathenism through its ministrations. The lives of believers had been braced by it to endure the hardships and persecutions which their Master had foretold them would fall upon them, and which they had been taught to regard as their blessed lot while this life lasted. They saw that with the neglect of the prophetic ministry there went hand in hand an attempt at conformity with the world and a relaxation of the more rigid rules of the Christian life. It was by no means the worst kind of Christians who called upon the Church to halt in this rapid approach to the usages of the world, in this relaxation of the severer maxims of the Christian life, in this neglect or undervaluing of the prophetic ministry, and in this exaltation of the office-bearers of the local churches. They grew increasingly alarmed and uneasy in the presence of the silent movement above described. It was taking from them some of their most precious possessions. They began to feel that there was no room for them in the Church which had hitherto sheltered them. All this was felt most strongly, as was to be expected, in the regions more remote from the great centres of public life, where the pressure of coming to some terms with the State was lighter. The standard of revolt was raised in the mountainous region of Phrygia—a land not thoroughly incorporated within the Roman administration. The movement was headed by a presbyter or elder, called Montanus, and became known as Montanism. It was natural that the crisis should emerge in these regions of Asia. No portion of the empire was so peopled by Christians. Christian prophecy had flourished in the neighbouring regions. The daughters of Philip had lived in the great city of Hierapolis. The Christian prophets Quadratus and Ammia had belonged to Philadelphia. Attalus of Pergamos had been taught in visions. Polycarp, the most distinguished Christian of the whole of Asia, was a prophet. Ignatius had exhibited his prophetic gifts in Philadelphia. On the other hand, if the country had produced many Christian prophets, its churches had been the earliest to organize themselves under the three-fold ministry. The prophetic and the local ministries confronted each other there as they did nowhere else.

This Phrygian movement was the centre and exaggeration of a wide-spreading revolt and separation from the great Church of the second and third centuries. It has been represented as an attempt at innovation on the old usages and habits of primitive Christianity. This is a mistaken view. At the same time if we confine our attention to the actions and claims of Montanus himself and the circle of Phrygia immediately surrounding him, there was much that was entirely new. Montanus’ idea seems to have been that he had been commissioned by God to gather all true Christians into a community, which would be ready by its renunciation of all the claims that social life presented and by an absolute self-surrender to the requirements of the higher Christian life, to meet the Lord Who was about to come and inaugurate His millennial kingdom in the immediate future. He seems to have believed that the Church had reached its final term of existence in the world. He and his fellow prophets therefore represented the last stage of prophecy, and consequently possessed an inspiration such as none of their predecessors could lay claim to. They in their own persons and with their special prophetic gifts, were the literal fulfilment of the promise given by our Lord in the Gospel of St. John, that the Father and the Son would take up their abode in true believers, and that the Paraclete had come to abide with them. Hence when they spoke under the influence of the divine afflatus it was not they, but the Spirit, that uttered the words. So entirely were the prophets separated from the Spirit, who made use of their organs of speech, that the oracles were uttered in the first person, and the Spirit, speaking through the mouth of a woman, used the masculine forms of speech. All this was new.

On the other hand, if the Phrygian movement be connected; as it must be, with the strenuous action of Christians in Gaul, North Africa, and indeed throughout most parts of the empire, these novelties were toned down in such a way that very little that was new remained. We may mis-read the Montanist utterances which belong to its earliest period if we interpret them as Tertullian and others did; but there is no misreading the feelings, thoughts and strivings of that great mass of Christians that welcomed the movement as something which encouraged them to resist that secularising of the Church which was being pressed forward by the heads of so many of the more powerful Christian communities.

When Dr. Salmon says that the bulk of what Tertullian taught as a Montanist he probably would equally have taught if Montanus had never lived, the statement, thoroughly correct, shows that Tertullian and the conservative Christians he represented saw in the Montanist movement something which was no innovation, but a strong assistance in preserving the old condition of the Church with its prophetic ministry, its rules for daily life, its separation from the world, and its expectation of the nearness of the coming of the Lord to found His millennial kingdom. The real question between these conservative Christians and the majority of their brethren was not about the government of the local churches. They all accepted the three-fold ministry, and both parties professed to accept and to honour prophecy. But the advanced party, which in the end triumphed, would subject the prophets to the official ministry; while the conservatives insisted that prophecy should be free as in the old days, and specially free to interfere with and rebuke the growing desire for conformity with the world and for coming to terms with the State.

A conservative reaction can scarcely avoid exaggerating the phases of Church life or organization for which it contends and perhaps suffers. This was probably true of the reaction in the second and in the beginning of the third centuries; but the conception that Montanism in the larger sense of the word (i.e. in the sense which includes Tertullian) was an innovation, and that the party in the Church which it attacked were carrying on the old line of Church life and usages, is untenable and in face of all the facts of history. The distinctive features of Montanism: its appreciation of the prophetic ministry, its conception of the Gospel as the new law, its refusal to entrust the office-bearers of the local churches with the restoration of those who had lapsed into grievous sins unless on the recommendation of a prophet speaking in the Spirit, and its views about the near approach of the millennial kingdom of the Lord, were all characteristic of the earlier Christianity.

The question of prophecy may be taken as an example:

It is true that after the separation between the Montanists and the “great” Church, Christian theologians vehemently opposed the Montanist theory of the nature of prophecy, and especially protested against the idea that true prophecy was ecstatic. But this was an afterthought for the purpose of discrediting the Montanist movement and claims. This can be shown by a comparison of the statements made about the prophecy which existed and was honoured within the Christian Church before the Montanist movement arose and while the earlier stages of the antagonism lasted. The nature of the Christian prophecy remains the same down to the time of Irenaeus, whose descriptions are not different from those of Justin Martyr. Justin declares that prophetic gifts existed in the Church in his time. “For one receives the spirit of understanding, another of counsel, another of healing, another of strength, another of foreknowledge, another of teaching, and another of the fear of God.” “The prophetic gifts remain with us even to the present time,” he says. They abide in fulfilment of the Old Testament promise quoted by St. Peter on the day of Pentecost. Irenaeus declares that prophecy existed in the Church in his days. “For some (believers) do certainly cast out devils, so that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits do frequently both believe and join the Church. Others have knowledge of things to come; they see visions and utter prophetic expressions.” He goes on to say that these things come about not by performing incantations, but by praying to the Lord in a pure, sincere and straightforward spirit. Tertullian has given us a vivid picture of what this kind of prophecy was like. He says: “We have now among us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites on the Lord’s Day in the Church. She converses with angels and even with the Lord. She both sees and hears mysterious communications (sacramenta). Some men’s hearts she understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies. Whether it be in the reading of the Scriptures, or in the chanting of Psalms, or in the preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers—in all these religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of seeing visions. . . . After the people are dismissed, at the conclusion of the sacred services she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in vision—for all her communications are examined with the most scrupulous care that their truth may be probed.”

Besides, the theory of the nature of prophecy ascribed to the Montanists was the theory of the second century. Prophecy was described as ecstatic. It is difficult, perhaps, to understand exactly what was meant by the word. This, however, is clear, that it meant that what came from the prophet was something given him, and was not the result of his ordinary powers of intelligence; also that the prophet could not prophesy at will, but had to wait for the divine afflatus, which might come quite unexpectedly or in answer to prayer. If this be all that is meant by ecstasy it is plain that the Church of the second century believed that its prophecy was ecstatic. Hermas declares that in true prophecy the spirit “speaks only when God wishes it to speak,” and that the “man filled with the Spirit of God speaks to the multitude as the Lord wishes.” The statements of Irenaeus about true prophecy are exactly the same: He says that the gift of prophecy comes from the grace of God alone, and “that only those on whom God sends His grace from above possess that divinely-bestowed power of prophesying.” Prophets “speak where and when God pleases.” We have seen how the prophetic afflatus came upon Ignatius when preaching to the Philadelphians, and how he cried out, speaking things quite unpremeditated which he felt had been given him to speak. It was afterwards maintained that the Montanist theory GI prophecy meant more than this, and the famous dictum of Montanus is continually quoted to mean more and to be repudiated. Montanus has said: “Behold the man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a plectrum. The man sleeps, and I wake. Behold it is the Lord who estranges the souls of men from themselves and gives them souls”; and the metaphor suggests that man is a merely passive instrument in the hands of God.

But even if we are to argue from a metaphor (always a dangerous kind of reasoning), it should be remembered that the same or similar metaphors were used to describe non-Montanist prophecy. Athenagoras speaks of the Spirit of God moving “the mouths of the prophets like musical instruments,” and of the Spirit making use of the prophets as “a flute-player breathes into his flute.” The author of the Cohortatio ad Gentes uses the famous metaphor of Montanus and speaks of the “divine plectrum descending from heaven and using righteous men as an instrument like a harp or lyre,” in order to reveal to men things divine and heavenly. It is impossible to say that Montanist prophecy was a new thing, and that Montanism in exalting the prophetic ministry was not thoroughly conservative in its endeavour.

The same result is reached when we consider the Montanist discipline. The whole movement was a protest against that growing conformity with the world which the Church of the second century had felt constrained to attempt, under the leadership of the office-bearers of the local churches. Like all conservative reactions, it exaggerated the characteristics it had arisen to conserve, but that was the only great difference.

It is probable that the movement in Phrygia had continued for some years before there was any break with the “great” Church: and after the separation did take place efforts were made to bring the leaders on both sides together again. The Martyrs of Lyons wrote urging peace, and the Roman Church had serious thoughts of interfering on the side of unity. Such attempts would probably have been unsuccessful. The separation came; and in Phrgyia at least, the great proportion of the Christian people sided with the party of Montanus. It became the Kataphrygian Church (the Church-according-to-the-Phrygians), and continued so for long. When the Emperor Constantine recognized the Christian religion the Marcionite and Montanist Christians did not share in the peace of the Church. The persecutions against them were rather intensified. The Phrygian Montanists, however, were not overwhelmed; but according to Sozomen Montanists disappeared elsewhere. Penal laws of increasing severity were enacted against them by Christian emperors. Their churches were confiscated; a rigorous search was made for their religious writings, which were destroyed when discovered; the ordination of their clergy was made a penal offence; the power of disposing of their property by will was denied them, and their nearest Catholic relatives were allowed to seize their possessions—and still they remained true to their church and to the prophetic ministry. At last in the sixth century the Emperor Justinian resolved to stamp them out, and the historian Procopius tells us that in their despair the Montanists gathered themselves, with their wives and children, into their churches, and setting fire to the buildings perished in the flames rather than submit to the bishops’ Church which had urged the persecution through all these centuries, and had forbidden the members to have any communion with Montanists, even when confined in a common prison for a common faith. All this bitterness and all this bloodshed because some Christians would insist that the prophetic ministry should be kept in the position assigned to it by St. Paul, and should not be subject to the rule of the elders “who are in the Church—those who possess the succession from the apostles.”

The “Great Church,” as it then began to be called, separated from her daughters, the Marcionite and the Montanist churches, went forth to her task of subduing the Roman world under the guidance of a three-fold ministry which ruled in every Christian community within the Empire. In its efforts to do its work thoroughly the organization of the great Empire, and especially its religious organization, became, as we shall afterwards see, a study growing in attractiveness and presenting points for imitation by the leaders of the society.

In this changed organization of the second and third centuries the old prophetic ministry was completely abandoned, and the local or congregational ministry had now no superiors to interfere with them and to supersede them in exhortation, in the dispensing of the Holy Supper, and in prescribing how Christians ought to live in the fear of God. The revolt against the changes made had ended in the conservatives, zealous for that ministry which had come down from apostolic days, and which St. Paul had placed at the head of the gifts bestowed by God upon His people, being driven out of the Church, and in their forming separate societies. The ministry which remained is what represented the “helps” and “pilotings” which God had placed in the Church. It was the spontaneous creation of the individual local churches. The ministry “from above” had disappeared; but what remained was not the less divine because it had been the creation of the congregation, for it was based on the possession and the recognition of “gifts” of service and rule which God had bestowed according to His promise upon His worshipping people.

Pictures of this ministry which ruled in the end of the second and in the earlier part of the third century, have been preserved for us in early ecclesiastical manuals. Perhaps the Canons of Hippolytus maybe most fitly selected to furnish them. These canons are thoroughly representative. They were the work of a western ecclesiastic, and they form the basis of almost all the later ecclesiastical discipline of the Eastern Church. They are also especially interesting, because they contain the clearest description of Christian public worship which we have between the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians and the much later Apostolic Constitutions.

The Christian society consisted of believers and their children; with a fringe of catechumens or candidates for baptism, and those who were still only inquirers into the truths of the Christian faith. The community was sharply divided into clergy and laity, with a number of persons who stood between the two sections, and who were specially honoured for their services or character—the confessors, the widows (honoured for their abundant prayer and for their nursing the sick), and celibates and virgins. The office-bearers included the pastor (now invariably called the bishop), elders, deacons, readers, and, perhaps, subdeacons. At the head of all stood the bishop, in whom the whole congregational life centred. He was chosen by the whole congregation, who assembled in church for the purpose. The people were taught to recognize that God was with them while they selected their pastor. When they had made their choice known and had clearly intimated the man whom they had elected, they were enjoined to say, “Oh God, strengthen him whom Thou hast prepared for us.”

It was the rule, when the bishop was set apart to his office, that the neighbouring bishops should be present; but this was not essential. The congregation possessed within itself the power and authority to carry out the ordination of their chief office-bearer. When all things were ready, and the whole congregation had assembled in Church, one of the bishops or one of the elders of the congregation, was selected to perform the act of ordination, which consisted in laying his hands on the head of the bishop-elect and praying over him. The beautiful prayer of consecration is given. God was asked to fill the bishop with the Spirit possessed by the apostles who founded the churches everywhere; to bless him in permitting him to rule a blameless flock; to make him a pattern in all holy living; to make him powerful in prayer; to give him grace to declare the pardon of sins; and to make him able to break the chains in which the evil spirits held any of his flock. The prayer makes us see what the duties of the bishop were. He led the public devotions of his people; he presided over the exercise of discipline; he had the care of the poor and of the sick; he was to drive out the evil spirits who troubled the bodies and the souls of members of his flock. The congregation was a Church of Christ because they were endeavouring to live the life of new obedience to which their Lord had called them, and the man at their head, their representative, was expected to be the saintliest man among them. If he had not learning, the reader was there to read and expound the Scriptures; if he possessed few administrative gifts the elders and the deacons were beside him to aid him; but a man of prayer and of holy life he must be—there could be no substitute for that.

Nothing is said about the election of elders, and it is impossible to say whether they were chosen by the people or nominated by the bishop or co-opted by the session. But we have two interesting bits of information which show from what classes of men the elders were often drawn. Martyrs and confessors were to be made elders. The martyr was one who, for the faith’s sake, had stood before the civil tribunal and had been punished. He became an elder at once; “his confession was his ordination.” If a man had made a confession before the court and had not suffered, he was to be made an elder by the bishop, and the same was to be done to a Christian slave who had confessed and had suffered. Only, the bishop in these two cases was to omit the petition for the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. The other case is even more interesting. Those men who possess the “gift” of healing are to be ordained presbyters after careful investigation be made that the “gift” is really possessed and that the cures do really come from God. The leaders of the churches seem to be anxious to enrol within the regular ministry of the congregation, and to prevent them overshadowing its authority, all who are possessed of “gifts,” or whom Christ has honoured by permitting them to be witnesses for Him. The elder was ordained by the bishop, who used the same prayer of consecration which was employed in the ordination of bishops, substituting only the word presbyteratum for episcopatum, for according to the theory of the Canons the elder was the equal of the bishop in all things save a special seat in the church and the right to ordain elders and deacons. The elder was therefore to be filled with the spirit of the apostles; to be an example to the flock; to be powerful in prayer; to care for the sick; to attend to discipline. The elders assisted the bishop in the conduct of public worship; they placed their hands on the offerings while the bishop prayed the prayer of thanksgiving; they stood on either side of the catechumens when they were baptized, and they introduced them into the congregation. The visitation of the sick, the power to drive out by means of prayer the evil spirit which was believed to produce disease, the care of the young and the exercise of discipline, were the peculiar duties of the elders, as they appear in these Canons.

The deacon, on the other hand, is the official who does the subordinate services. He is told to remember that he is the servant of God, the servant of the bishop and the servant of the elders. The deacons visit the congregation, report cases of sickness to the bishop and to the elders; they have special charge over the poor, especially of the “secret poor,” widows, orphans and strangers. They undertake the instruction of the catechumens and report to the bishop when they are ripe for baptism.

Not much is said about the duties of the “widows” and the “virgins,” but they seem to look after the women and the girls as the deacons care for the men. The “widows” are the sick-nurses of the community, and are to be honoured for these loving services and for their prayers for the whole congregation.

The picture of the Christian community presented in these Canons is that of a single congregation ruled by a pastor or bishop with his session of elders, who, theoretically of the same ecclesiastical rank as himself, are in practice his assistants. The laity are in the position of loving subordination which Ignatius contemplated and urged. The brotherhood of the members of the community is expressively shown in the way in which newly baptized catechumens, introduced formally by the elder, are greeted with the kiss of welcome and received with expressions of joy; in the care for the sick and the poor; in the provisions for nursing suffering women by the “widows” and the “virgins”; and in the thought that it is the duty of the widows to pray for the whole congregation.

The little society is thoroughly self-governing and independent. It contains within itself the power to perform all ecclesiastical acts from the selection and ordination of its bishop to the expulsion of offenders; but it nevertheless belongs to a wide society or larger brotherhood, and this is expressed in the usual but not essential practice of associating neighbouring bishops with its elders in the ordination of its bishop.

The acts of worship are described with greater detail in these Canons than in any earlier Christian document save the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. St. Paul has given us more information about the meeting for Exhortation; these Canons tell us more about the meeting for Thanksgiving—indeed, they present us with the earliest complete description of this crowning act of Christian worship. As in apostolic times, we find two separate meetings for public worship—the meeting for Exhortation and the meeting for Thanksgiving—but the latter is no longer associated with a common meal. No forms of prayer are given for use at the former, but there is a set form of service prescribed for the latter. Both are held on the Lord’s Day—the meeting for Exhortation early in the morning, and the Eucharistic service in the afternoon.