Thomas M. Lindsay · 6 of 17

Chapter IV. The Churches Creating Their Ministry. · Part 1

In approaching the subject of the ministry of the local Christian communities it may be well to note these things at the outset. We have abundant evidence of the thorough independence of the local churches during the apostolic age, whether we seek for it in the epistles of St. Paul or in the Acts of the Apostles. We must remember the uniquely Christian correlation of the three thoughts of leadership, service and “gifts”; leadership depends on service, and service is rendered possible by the bestowal of “gifts” of the Spirit which enable the recipients to serve their brethren. The possession of these “gifts” of the Spirit was the evidence of the presence of Jesus within the community, and gave the brotherhood a divine authority to exercise rule and oversight in the absence of any authoritative formal prescriptions about a definite form of government. We have also to bear in mind the general evidence which exists to show that there was a gradual growth of the associative principle from looser to more compact forms of organization. Nor should it be forgotten that the members of these earliest congregations of believers were well acquainted with social organization of various kinds which entered into their daily life in the world. When we remember these facts it need not surprise us that though in the end the organization of all the churches was, so far as we can see, pretty much the same, this common form of government may have arisen independently and from a variety of roots which may at least be guessed if they cannot be proved. There are traces of several primitive types of organization within the churches of the apostolic age.

The first notice we have of organization within a local church is given us in the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles when, at the suggestion of the apostles, seven men were chosen for what is called the service of tables. This took place probably in the year 34 A.D. These men were selected and set apart to take care of the poor and to administer the charity of the congregation.

It is too often forgotten that this service had not the second-rate importance which now belongs to it in ecclesiastical organization. It is plain that in apostolic times the primary duty overshadowing all others, was that those who had this world’s goods should help their poorer brethren who had need. The sayings of our Lord were ringing in their ears: “If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven”; “Every one that hath left houses and lands for My name’s sake shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life”; “Seek ye His kingdom, and these things shall be added unto you . . . sell that ye have and give alms; make for yourselves purses which wax not old.” Their devotion to the invisible God was to manifest itself in practical love to the visible brethren. The first duty of presbyters, according to Polycarp, was to be compassionate and merciful, “visiting all the infirm, not neglecting a widow or an orphan or a poor man”; and he calls widows “God’s altar”—a phrase repeated by Tertullian. These men were chosen to fill the highest administrative position which the Church could give, and were to take charge in the name of the community of the most sacred of all ecclesiastical duties. The office instituted was required by the ordinary and permanent needs of the Christian society, for the Lord had said that the poor were always to be with them.

A few years later we read of money collected outside Palestine and brought for distribution among the poor of the Church in Jerusalem by Barnabas and Saul, who placed it in the hands of men who are called elders or presbyters. Unless we are to believe that the appointment of the seven was a merely temporary expedient, it is only natural to suppose that the duty of distributing money among the poor was performed by the men who were appointed by the Church to do it, or by others appointed in the same way and for the same purpose; and the natural inference is that the Seven of Acts vi. were the elders of Acts xi., and that we have in the narrative the account of the beginnings of the organization as a whole in the Church at Jerusalem, and not merely the institution of a special order of the Christian ministry.

The Church in Jerusalem appointed seven men. The apostles suggested the number. “Look ye out therefore, brethren, from among you seven men.” They are never called deacons; the Seven is the technical name they were known by. Philip, one of them, is not called “Philip the Deacon,” but “Philip one of the Seven.” Why this name? To say with Dr. Lightfoot that the number is mystical is scarcely an explanation, and it is not likely that it was merely haphazard. The Hebrew village community was ruled by a small corporation of seven men, as the Hindu village is managed by the council of the Five or the Punchayat. The Seven was a title as well known in Palestine as the Five is now in India. The Church in Jerusalem, in founding their official council of administration, created an entirely new organization required by the needs of the young community, but one which brought with it associations which had deep roots in the past social life of the people. Modern missionary enterprise, which has the same problems of organization before it as confronted primitive Christianity, frequently sheds light on the procedure of the latter. The Church of Scotland (Established) missionaries at Darjeeling, who have based the organization of their native church on the Hindu Punchayat; the missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of England, who have laid hold on the village representative system in China; Bishop Patteson, who made a similar use of the native organizations in the South Seas—have all unconsciously followed in the footsteps of the apostles when they suggested the Jewish village government as a basis for the organization of the primitive Church in Jerusalem.

This earliest example of Christian ecclesiastical organization contains in it three interesting elements—apostolic guidance and sanction; the self-government and independence of the community evinced in the responsibility for good government laid upon the whole membership; and, as a result, a representative system of administration suggested by the every-day surroundings of the people.

When we trace the expansion of Christianity and the creation of Christian communities outside Jerusalem, we have no such distinct picture of the beginnings of their organization as is given in Acts vi., but there are indications of what took place. The preaching of the Gospel gave rise to Christian communities in various parts of Palestine which regarded the Church at Jerusalem as their common mother church, and all these communities together made the Church of God which St. Paul persecuted. It is probable also that when this Judeo-Christianity spread beyond the bounds of Palestine throughout Syria and Cilicia, the community in the capital of Judaism, presided over by its college of office-bearers with St. James at their head, was regarded as the mother church and the centre of the whole movement. They had before them the example of Judaism which appeared one visible whole centred in the great council. of the elders in Jerusalem.

Further, the Acts of the Apostles relates that Paul and Barnabas left behind them at Derbe, Lystra and Iconium, communities of Christians with elders at their head. We are told that the apostles “appointed for them elders in every church.” The word, χειροτονήσαντες, means strictly to elect by popular vote. It suggests that Paul and Barnabas followed the example of their brethren at Jerusalem. and suggested and superintended an election of office-bearers, and the title “elders” (πρεσβύτεροι) was probably derived from the Church of Jerusalem. It need not have been so, however, for the word was common enough among the Greeks, and the more mature men in the congregations would be naturally selected. A second and very different type of organization, though capable of being joined with the first, also comes to us from the primitive Church in Jerusalem. The accounts of the earliest condition of the Church, whether taken from the Acts of the Apostles or from the Epistles of St. Paul, reveal an independent self-governing community under the guidance of the apostles St. Peter and St. John. The leadership of these two apostles is conspicuous throughout the first eleven chapters of the Book of Acts. Then there is a sudden change which is quite unexplained, and in the twelfth chapter (ver. 17) and onwards St. James, the brother of our Lord, is seen to be in a position of pre-eminence. The letters of St. Paul also reveal the change, but equally give no hint of when it took place or of the causes which led to it. But if canonical Scripture tells us nothing about the reasons for the change, tradition and early Church history have a good deal to say about it. It is quite impossible to explain the continuous and marked influence of St. James, on any theory of the organization of the Church at Jerusalem which makes it borrow its constitution from the Jewish Synagogue system. When we read the story of the election of his successors we have suggestions of another and very different organization. The James, who was the recognized and honoured head of the community in Jerusalem, was the eldest male surviving relative of our Lord. We are told by Eusebius, quoting, it can hardly be doubted, from Hegesippus, that after the martyrdom of St. James and the fall of Jerusalem, the remaining apostles and personal disciples of our Lord, with those that were related to our Lord according to the flesh, the greater part of them being yet living, met together and unanimously selected Symeon to fill the vacant place. In another passage he says that Symeon was the son of Clopas our Lord’s paternal uncle, and adds that “he was put forward by all as the second in succession, being the cousin of the Lord”; in a third he speaks of “the child of the Lord’s paternal uncle, the aforesaid Symeon, son of Clopas,” and in a fourth he tells us that Hegesippus relates that Clopas was “the brother of Joseph.” In short he dwells pertinaciously on the natural kinship between the head of the primitive Christianity in Jerusalem and our Lord. The last glimpse we have of our Lord’s kinsfolk has been recorded by the same gossipy writer, who made it his business to preserve such details, and it reveals them at the head of the Jewish Christian community. He tells us that in the fifteenth year of the Emperor Domitian “there still survived kinsmen of the Lord, grandsons of Judas, who was called the Lord’s brother according to the flesh.” They were dragged to Rome and brought before the Emperor. He questioned them. They showed him their hands horny with holding the plough, and said that their whole wealth amounted to about 9,000 denarii, the value of thirty-nine acres (πλέθρα) of land, which they cultivated themselves and on which they paid taxes. The Emperor contemptuously sent them back to Palestine, and there they were made the rulers of the Church because they had been martyrs and were of the lineage of the Lord. They lived till the reign of Trajan, and their names were James and Zoker.

A succession in the male line of the kindred of Jesus, where the eldest male relative of the founder succeeds, where the election to office is largely regulated by a family council, and where two can rule together, has no analogy with any form of organization known in the Christian Church. But the type of organization is easily recognizable. It was, and is to this day, a common Oriental usage that the headship of a religious society is continued in the line of the founder’s kindred according to Eastern line of succession, from eldest male surviving relative to eldest male surviving relative, whether brother, uncle, son or cousin. Here again we have a Christian community organizing itself, and that under apostolic sanction, on a plan borrowed from familiar social custom.

When we turn to the churches which owed their being to the apostolic work of St. Paul, we find the independence and self-government evidently taken for granted and formulated in principles laid down by the apostle in his epistles. The churches at Rome and at Corinth were churches because the presence and power of Christ were manifested within the Christian fellow-ship in a series of “gifts,” which provided everything necessary for their corporate life as churches, organized according to any form of self-government which recommended itself to them. There is not a trace of the idea that the churches had to be organized from above in virtue of powers conferred by our Lord officially and specially upon certain of their members. On the contrary the power from above, which was truly there, was in the community, a direct gift from the Master Himself.

We find in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul traces of men who exercised rule or at least leadership of some kind within the churches. They may have been elected office-bearers or they may have been men who, without being office-bearers in the strict sense of the words, performed services necessary for the well being of the community such as office-bearers are accustomed to do.

Even in the case of the simplest and smallest Christian communities certain services must always be rendered to the whole fellowship. Some one must provide a room for the meetings, take care of the Scriptures and other books required for the acts of public worship, keep the records of the society. The meetings need a president, if only for the time being. There is also need for services which may be called spiritual. Some one must see that brotherly intercourse is maintained, that quarrels are avoided, and that persons at variance are reconciled. The sick have to be visited, inquirers and the young have to be instructed and encouraged in the faith. Some persons have to see to all these things. They will naturally season their work with advice, admonition, warning, and encouragement. The men who begin to do these things from their love to the cause and the work naturally go on doing them; and their activity which was at first purely personal and voluntary, tends to become recognized and official. This is what may be seen on any mission field in the present day, especially in such lands as China and India, where Christianity is doing aggressive work among a civilized people habituated to work together in a society. The epistles of St. Paul reveal the same state of things. The men who are to be honoured as leaders are those who work for their brethren and put some heart into their labour (οἱ κοπιῶντες ἐν ὑμῖν). Their work might include exhortation and admonition, for the term applied to them by St. Paul is the word he used to describe his own labours, or it might be work of some other kind. Whatever it was, it was necessary for the foundation, growth and stability of the infant churches. The men who laboured in these ways were the natural leaders of the community, for leadership was to be based on service, and the apostle declared that they were to be “esteemed highly for their work’s sake.” These workers, as is the case in modern missions, were the first converts, like Stephanas, or the men who had given their houses for the meetings of the brethren. These brethren were to have the pre-eminence, and were to be obeyed for their work’s sake.

These natural leaders receive a special name in the epistles to the Romans and to the Thessalonians. They are called “those who are over you in the Lord.” The word is προϊστάμενοι; and the term has a history, and would at all events suggest a special kind of relationship between leaders and led. It suggested the relation of patron and client, of προστάτης and μέτοικος, familiar enough in Rome and in Thessalonica, which no longer bore the old strictly legal meaning, but which in a less definite sense permeated the whole social life of the times. The word or a cognate one (προεστὼς) lingered long in the Roman Church. It is found in the writings of Hermas, the Roman presbyter, and was used by Justin Martyr when he wished to explain the organization of a Christian congregation to a Roman Emperor. Archaeological investigation has proved how families among the privileged Roman aristocracy were the patrons of their poorer Christian brethren. The “church in the house” was not necessarily a “kitchen meeting.” The investigations of the late Commendatore de Rossi have shown us that the Christian faith made its way at a very early period into the families of some of the noblest and wealthiest Romans. They could, and probably did, open their houses to their poorer brethren and give their great audience halls (basilica) for the worship of the common brotherhood, interposing the protection of the legal sacredness of their private life as a shield on all who joined in their devotions. Congregational meetings of this kind had the appearance of an assembly of powerful patrons and their humble clients, and thus took the form of a well recognized condition of Roman social life in all its ramifications. This idea is con-firmed by the shape of the earliest Roman churches, which, as has been before remarked, resemble the audience hall of the wealthy Roman burgher. When buildings were erected for the exclusive use of the Christian worship in happier days, the architects naturally copied the arrangement of the buildings they had been used to, and unconsciously transmitted architectural proof of the churchly organization of earlier times. Here, for a third time, we can see the Christian fellowship organizing itself under social usages well understood by the members of the infant brotherhood.

In the Epistles to the Corinthians, while we find exhortations to obey, we do not find any words which designate those to whom obedience is due; nor have we any description of the organization which prevailed in the Corinthian Church, nor any advice given by the apostle about what it ought to be. The Christians of Corinth lived amidst so many forms of associated life that if organization was to be worked out by the congregation for itself, they would naturally have more aptitude for it than most Christian communities. For the people of Corinth were accustomed to confraternities of all kinds, and above all to private religious associations for the practice of special cults. Under the universal state religion of the Roman Empire there were innumerable religions with their different forms of worship. The state religion had its colleges of priesthoods, its great temples and its public sacrifices; these private religions had their associations for the performance of their peculiar rites. The Jewish synagogues of the Dispersion were enrolled as private religious societies, and seemed to their heathen neighbours to be one out of many kinds of institutions for the practice of a religion admitted to be lawful (religio licita), although it was the faith of only a small minority of their neighbours.

The organization of these confraternities, as far as the western division of the Empire is concerned, is known in a general way; and although it differed in details in different societies, certain common features can be recognized. The confraternities were thoroughly democratic to the extent of admitting slaves to be members provided their masters gave consent. The confraternity was regarded as a great family, and the associates called each other “brothers” and “sisters.” They had a common meal at stated times. They paid a monthly subscription to the common fund (stips menstrua). They were permitted to make their own laws provided nothing was enacted which came into collision with the regulations of the State. These confraternities elected their own office-bearers, who were commonly called decuriones; and the society was strictly divided into office-bearers and commons, though occasionally we find an intermediate class of honoured persons. The confraternities exercised discipline over their members and inflicted fines in money and in kind for offences. A book was kept (album) containing the names of all the associates. Women were members of a large number of these confraternities, more especially of the burial clubs. Their places of meeting were generally called scholae, because they were the scenes of leisure and re-creation, though the words curia and basilica are sometimes found (the Greek word is almost always οἶκος). There they had their common meals and their business meetings; the two were never held together. “Item,” says a decretum, “placuit si quis quid queri aut referre volet, in conventu referat, ut quieti et hilares diebus solemnis epulemur.” Almost all these confraternities had a patron or a patroness, who was always elected by acclamation and never by a mere majority of votes. Sometimes we hear of confraternities belonging to or having their seat in a private house, consisting probably of the servants or slaves of the mansion. Almost all these confraternities, like their lineal descendants the “gilds” of mediaeval times, whether in England or on the Continent, had a distinctly religious side even when they were not formed for the express purpose of practising a foreign cult. They placed themselves under the protection of some deity or deities—merchants honoured Mercury; the dealers in grain, Ceres and the Nymphs; the wine‑dealers, Liber; the weavers and spinners, Minerva; and the fishermen, Neptune, etc.—and paintings of the protecting deity and images of the emperors adorned the walls of the Schola.

A large number of the Christian converts must have belonged to these confraternities before their conversion; many maintained their places as members after their entrance into the Christian Church in spite of all the efforts of masterful ecclesiastics, like Cyprian of Carthage and some bishops of Rome, to prevent the practice. They must have known how the associations were organized, and they must have carried that knowledge with them into Christianity. They were likely to make use of that knowledge in the interests of the new faith to which they had attached themselves.

This line of argument may easily be pressed too far. Scholars like Renan, Heinrici, Hatch and Weingarten, to say nothing of Schmiedel, have pushed the relation which they think subsisted between the heathen confraternities and the organization of the primitive Gentile Christian communities much further than the evidence seems to warrant. Nothing that they have brought forward bears out the idea that the Christian societies were framed on the model of these pagan confraternities. On the contrary, all the evidence laboriously accumulated to establish the similarity between the Christian organization and that of the pagan confraternities, has not produced many points of resemblance which are not the common property of all forms of social organization. The primitive Christian communities organized themselves independently in virtue of the new moral and social life that was implanted within them; but they did not disdain to take any hints about organization which would be of service from the pagan associations to which they had been accustomed.

Here then we have, not a fourth type, but a fourth root of early Christian organization.

A fifth may be found in the Jewish synagogues of the Dispersion; for many of the converts must have been Jews, or Gentiles who had become Jewish proselytes. The communities of the Jewish people scattered over the Roman Empire occupied very different positions in different places. In Alexandria and in Cyrene they had acquired almost complete political independence, and formed one large and separate community distinct from the surrounding population. In Rome, they had no rights that could be called political, and were divided into a number of separate communities apparently quite independent the one of the others.

Everywhere however throughout the Roman Empire, thanks to the legislation of Julius Caesar and Augustus, the Jews had acquired complete legal protection for their religion. This had been held to include the right to administer their property within their own communities according to their own laws, and to have a limited jurisdiction over their own members. Thus even where they had the fewest political rights the Jewish communities were always recognized as lawful associations permitted to practise the rites of a religio licita. The unit of the Jewish organization was the synagogue. In Alexandria the syngagogues seem to have been united under a common council; but in Rome, as has been said, the synagogues were independent associations, each having its own council, its own president, and its own office-bearers. The privileges of administering their own property and of exercising jurisdiction over their own members, made these synagogues as much civil as religious communities, and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the two sides. At the head of each community was a council, the γερουσία, with a president, the γερουσιάρχης; the official leaders of the community were called ἄρχοντες, and these archons were commonly elected for a term of years and sometimes for life. They were purely civil officials; they decided questions of property; they had some criminal jurisdiction; and they were permitted to punish disobedience. The communities had also almoners—at least three, who are commonly classed among the ecclesiastical office-bearers, but whose work was almost purely civil. The only purely ecclesiastical office was that of ἀρχισυνάγωγος. All the actions of public worship, reading the Scriptures, preaching, praying, were performed by the private members, and it was the duty of the official to select those who were to take part in the services. Some synagogues had more than one ἀρχισυνάγωγος, and in later times the title must have become an honorary one, for we find it given to women and to boys. Besides this purely ecclesiastical official there was the “servant of the synagogue” (ὑπηρέτης), who seems to have combined the offices of school-master, beadle and public executioner; he taught the children, brought in and removed the copies of Scripture used in public worship, and corporal punishment for misdeeds was administered by him.

However the internal organization of these Jewish communities differed from the pagan confraternities, their external appearance was such that they were undoubtedly classed among them, and by the names they gave their officials and by some of their customs they would appear to have tried to carry out the likeness as far as possible.

This synagogue organization has some points in common with that of the early Christian communities, and these were probably taken over into Christianity, but the differences were so great that it is impossible to say that the one organization comes from the other. Whether we regard its connexion with the pagan confraternities on the one hand, or with the Jewish synagogues on the other, it may be said that the organization of the Christian communities proceeded by a path peculiar to themselves. Starting from the simplest forms of combination they framed their ministry to serve their own needs in accordance with what they saw was best fitted for their own peculiar work. This did not mean that the training acquired in pagan confraternity or in Jewish synagogue was altogether without effect on the members of the infant Christian churches, or that usages suitable for their purposes were not adopted; but it does mean that the organization of the primitive Gentile churches was not a copy either of pagan confraternity or of Jewish synagogue. What is to be insisted upon is that, on the supposition that the apostles did not prescribe any definite form of Church government (and there is not only no evidence that they did, but the indications are all the other way), the Christians of Corinth and of other cities in the East and in the West were sufficiently acquainted with forms of social organization to be able to organise their communities in such a way that the possibilities of rule and service which lay in the possession of those gifts of the Spirit that manifested the presence of Christ, could find free exercise for the benefit and edification of the whole community.

One thing, however, in this connexion must not be forgotten, as it often is. The infant Christian churches came into being in the Graeco-Roman world at a time when the imperial policy was extremely jealous of any forms of social organization, and when its officials were on the watch to prevent any new development of the principle. Julius Caesar, on political grounds, had suppressed all confraternities except those of ancient origin, but, also from motives of policy, had expressly excepted the Jewish synagogues. His nephew and successor Augustus followed in his uncle’s footsteps, and in addition had ordered all religious associations to be placed under the strictest control and surveillance. The well-known contempt which the first emperor entertained for Oriental religions was doubtless partly responsible for this. The Jewish synagogues were again specially exempted. All new confraternities had to get a special permit from the senate, if they were in the senatorial provinces, and from the emperor, if they belonged to the imperial ones. The only associations which were perhaps exempted were the collegia tenuiorum, when they were also burial clubs; but it is doubtful whether there was ever a general concession made till the time of Severus. There existed, however, throughout the empire a multitude of confraternities which had not received the sanction of either senate or emperor, and which were therefore illicit, but which were undisturbed although under police supervision. They could be suppressed at any time, and it was provided that no very serious punishment accompanied the suppression. Christianity was never recognized as a religio licita till the time of Constantine, and could never have received official sanction for its assemblies; but it was not impossible for the Christian churches to take the place of an illicit confraternity provided they had such an external resemblance to some well recognized confraternities as would permit the police to connive at their existence. It is undoubted that the Christian Church was at first believed by the Romans to belong to the tolerated and protected Judaism. Tertullian meets the charge that Christianity was “hiding something of its presumption under the shadow of an illustrious religion (Judaism), one which has at any rate the authorization of law.” So long as the Roman Government did not perceive the difference between the Christians and the Jews, the infant Christian churches could remain sheltered under the laws which permitted legalized confraternities; but when the difference became manifest, and when Jews themselves began to denounce the Christians, some other shelter was required. This could be and no doubt was furnished by the general external resemblance of the Christian societies to the pagan confraternities for religious practices. Hence conformity with the usages of a pagan confraternity gave the Christians the best means of escaping the attention of the authorities, alert to notice any attempts to start altogether new associations. It is evident that the Christian communities had some usages in common with the confraternities, and precisely those which would be the most likely to attract attention. They met together for a common meal (which was one of the things that Pliny noticed); they made a distinction between the meetings for the common meal and those for edification and for business; they honoured the dies natalis of a martyr as the confraternities celebrated the birthdays of benefactors; they exhibited a reverence for their dead brethren in ways that could be compared with the practices of the confraternities; above all, after the time of the Emperor Nerva they tried to assimilate themselves to the collegia tenuiorum, which obtained an easier recognition on the part of the authorities, and this came to a head when Bishop Zephyrinus was able to get the Roman Church registered as a burial club. There was sufficient external resemblance between the confraternities to enable Tertullian to plead that the Church should be recognized as a legally permitted association, and to make Pliny suggest that he might proceed against the Christians as members of an illicit collegium. All these things enable us to see how the Christian churches during the earliest part of their existence could maintain a position of precarious security in face of the imperial policy of not permitting new associations. But we are scarcely warranted in drawing conclusions about the inward organization of the primitive Christian communities. What we can infer is, that the Christians of the primitive Gentile churches had the ordinary experience to enable them to make use of all the divine gifts of rule and service in creating for their churches from their midst a ministering service.