Thomas M. Lindsay · 7 of 17

Chapter IV. The Churches Creating Their Ministry. · Part 2

Churches like that of Corinth and Philippi, whatever may have suggested their forms of organization, and whatever bands held them together, had within them persons with the “gifts” which enabled them to offer wise counsels, to assist their neighbours, to lead the devotions and to manage the affairs of the community. If it be said, as it is sometimes done, that the churches of Corinth and Rome were not properly organized because we do not hear of bishops or presbyters or deacons, then that means that a Christian community could be addressed as a Christian church, could be called “Christ’s Body,” could admit catechumens by the sacred door of baptism, could assemble together for public worship, could partake together of the Holy Supper, could exercise Christian discipline, and all this without office-bearers set apart for the purposes of the ministry in regular and ecclesiastical fashion. It shows, as nothing else can, that the Church comes before the ministry, and that it creates for itself and its own needs its ministering service; the natural leaders led, the people followed, the organization grew and the new moral and social life had full liberty to develop itself in all manner of Christian service. The two types of the earliest local ministry, the serving and the leading, the ἀντιλήψεις and the κυβερνήσεις, the διακονεῖν and the ἐπισκοπεῖν appeared first as forms of doing what service was required of them, and then as permanent offices.

Hitherto, with one exception, we have been working at those portions of the New Testament whose dates are well ascertained. Our material has been drawn chiefly from the earlier Epistles of St. Paul, all of which belong to the years before 57 A.D. When we come to the material given in the Epistle of James, 1 Peter, and the Pastoral Epistles, we are at once confronted with questions of date and authorship, on which modern scholars hold very varying opinions.

For our purposes, however, these questions are by no means so important as might at first be supposed. No critic, whose opinions deserve serious consideration, denies the truth of the pictures of the ecclesiastical organization exhibited in the Pastoral Epistles or in the later chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. While they may refuse to admit that St. Paul or St. Luke was the author and while they may relegate the composition to the last decade of the first or to the second or third decades of the second century, they all admit that the representations of ecclesiastical polity found in these documenta are true for this later period and may be true for a much earlier one. The Church, it is held universally, did pass through the stage of organization shown in these documents. The only question is the date of the stage. No reasonable critic would affirm that a special feature of ecclesiastical organization may not have been in existence long before it is mentioned, or that the date when we first hear about it is the date of its origin, unless there is the express statement that it took its beginning at that time. For example, when it it said that Paul and Barnabas did not see elders set over the churches of Derbe, Lystra and Iconium (Acts xiv. 23), no one denies that the passage is evidence for the existence of elders in these churches in the beginning of the second century. Only some critics believe that the statement so conflicts with St. Paul’s own account of his conduct towards his missionary churches that it is impossible to accept the idea that the office of eldership, which was certainly present when the document was written, dates as far back as the planting of the churches. They say that the writer, not unnaturally, attributes the polity of his own time to the earlier period. Others, who accept the late date of the document, find certain corroborative evidence of the existence of elders in these churches long before this date, and have no difficulty in believing that the institution of the office may have come from the missionary journey of St. Paul, whatever the date or authorship of the document which relates the circumstance. The same remark applies to the Pastoral Epistles. If the late date of the documents be accepted, and if it is also believed that the accounts of the organization of the churches given in them indicate a difference of polity from what appears in the undisputed Epistles of St. Paul, the result is not to discredit the information the documents give us about ecclesiastical organization, but to accept it as evidence for what existed in the first and second decades of the second century. If the late date of composition be maintained, and if it is held that the information given is not inconsistent with what existed in earlier days, then nothing compels us to conclude that the beginnings of the polity described are as late as the accepted date of the documents describing them. In either case the documents are held to describe truly the condition of the ministry of the Church at an earlier or at a later period—the question of time being settled not by the date of the document but by a comparison between the information it gives with what we know of the earlier period. The matter involved does not concern a general conception of ecclesiastical organization, but whether a certain stage of development, which did exist some-time, was of an earlier or of a later appearance—a question which, when we consider the utmost limits of time involved, is comparatively unimportant.

We need not, therefore, concern ourselves here with the problems which the date and authorship of the Book of Acts and of 1 Peter suggest. But prevailing critical opinions about the Pastoral Epistles place the portions which concern our subject so very late that it is necessary either to dissent from them or to relegate the information these documents give to the period which produced the Epistles of Ignatius and the Sources of the Apostolic Canons. These Pastoral Epistles were extensively used in the Primitive Church as a document giving directions about ecclesiastical organization and discipline. The Muratorian Fragment tells us this. Like all documents used in this way, they were apt to be interpolated to suit the needs of time and place. Statements about prevailing errors to be shunned were liable to be altered in order to be more sharply descriptive of existing heresies or tendencies to heresy and disciplinary directions might easily have taken a more technical language to suit a later period. But when due allowance is made for these natural effects of the primitive use of these documents, there does not seem to be evidence strong enough to warrant our refusing to believe that they are what they declare themselves to be—letters from St. Paul to two of his most trusted fellow-workers, instructing them how to carry on his missionary work, which he was not able to superintend personally. If this be the case these letters show us what St. Paul was in the habit of doing in the mission fields which be-longed peculiarly to himself. Titus had accompanied the apostle, released from his Roman captivity, to Crete, and had been left there to complete the work which the apostle, pressed for time, could not stay to finish. His duty was to see that “elders” were chosen in every local church. The charge recalls the account given in the Acts of the Apostles of the missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas through the district which included the cities of Derbe, Lystra and Iconium. On that missionary tour the apostles did not see to the appointment of “elders” when their converts were first gathered from Judaism and heathenism. They allowed the believers in the new faith some little time to prove themselves. It was on their return journey, when they were “confirming “ their converts, that the elders were appointed. So here Titus was left till the sufficient time had elapsed, and then he was to see to the selection of elders in the local churches of Crete. His work was one that could be finished within a comparatively short time, for the apostle expected him to follow to Nicopolis, where St. Paul was to pass the winter. There is no suggestion that his function was anything like a permanent office in the Church. The work given him to do is perfectly familiar to modern missionaries. The other deputy was Timothy. He had come with the apostle to Ephesus, and circumstances, we know not what, had required that one of the two should remain and “confirm” the Church there. St. Paul had other work to do; Timothy was selected to remain, and he received two letters advising him how to act. Such is the setting of these Pastoral Epistles as related in the writings themselves.

In these letters to Titus and to Timothy we find, as we might expect in such documents, much more detailed references to the organization of the churches than in the Epistles addressed to the churches themselves. We find unmistakably an official ministry which appears to consist of two grades. We see evidence of a congregational roll on which the names of the poor, who are to receive the support of the congregation, are entered. There are also traces of a ministry of women. We find the apostle laying down rules to guide his deputies in the selection of office-bearers and in the removal of ecclesiastical excommunication. In short, we find a great deal more definite information about the organization and the ministry of the primitive churches than in any other of the New Testament writings.

If we believe that the apostle was above all things a missionary, and that his deputies were to do the work of missionaries, which seems to be the only view which is consistent with the nature of the function and the description of their work which is given in the New Testament writings, these Pastoral Epistles may be expected to show us the organization of the primitive Gentile churches from the inside, while in the Epistles of St. Paul, written either before or during the Roman captivity, we see the same organization from the outside. They tell us how the apostle personally superintended the building into churches of the communities of believers his preaching had gathered together. The two sets of letters are complementary. In the earlier letters we see the apostle encouraging every form of spontaneous action, and how he made the infant communities feel that the whole responsibility lay upon their shoulders. In the later epistles the master-builder shows his deputies how carefully he was accustomed to guide the exercise of that responsibility with scarcely felt touches of the hand.

The duties of the two deputies varied with the wants of the places in which they were set. Timothy had to do with an older community whose special circumstances demanded special care; Titus had to deal with comparatively newly-established congregations, and to guide them carefully but unobtrusively to organize themselves. Both had to do the work which the apostle was himself accustomed to do in similar circumstances. It was the most difficult and delicate work that falls to the lot of a missionary—to guide into right channels of self-government communities comparatively young in the faith, and to do it in such a way that the community may feel that it is doing the work itself, and will be able to sustain itself when the guiding hand shall be removed. In modern times nothing tests the ability of a missionary for his work like this very task.

The apostle gave both Titus and Timothy a master-thought to guide them. The infant Christian communities were to be looked on as Households of God, and as every great household needs servants who superintend, so the Household of God needs men who have the oversight. He that has proved faithful in small things is the most likely to prove faithful in all-important work, and the man who has shown that he can guide and rule his own household well is declared to be the best fitted to super-intend the Household of God. Hence we are told very little about the special duties of the presbyters or bishops, or whatever their usual name was, and find little mention of qualities fitted for special functions. What the apostle insists on is character, and that kind of character which is shown in family relationships.

Titus is told that a presbyter or elder must be a man who is above suspicion, who is a faithful husband and whose children are Christians of well regulated lives. He is not to be self-willed, nor soon angry, nor given to wine, nor turbulent, nor given to money; he is to be a lover of strangers, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, upright, pious and temperate in all things. Besides, he ought to be so well-grounded in the principles of Christian morality and religion that he can exhort the brethren and answer the common Jewish and heathen objections to the Christian faith.

Timothy was placed in temporary charge in a district where the Christian community had existed for a longer period; and the differences in the advice given all gather round this fact. The office-bearers selected by the community were not to be taken from the most recently converted, but from men who had some experience of Christianity, and whose character had stood the test of time. The office of “oversight” had become sought after, and there was the more need for careful selection. But as in the letter to Titus what St. Paul insists on is character, as that has displayed itself within the family, for rule in the human household is the best training for management within the Household of God. The list of qualifications is practically the same as was given to Titus, with this added, that he who has the oversight ought to be a man respected by the heathen as well as by his fellow Christians.

The qualifications demanded of deacons also practically consist of character tested by behaviour in the household—faithfulness to wife, and evidence of parental control over children and wise dealing with servants. It is also interesting to notice a ministry of women.

Presbyters or elders who rule well are to be honoured, and those who in addition assist in the ministry of the Word are to be doubly honoured, or perhaps to receive a double honorarium from the free-will offerings of the people. Elders who do not rule well are to be looked after; but the apostle charges his deputy not to accept accusations against them rashly, but to follow the old Jewish rule which required at least two grave witnesses to any accusation affecting character. But if an elder, or indeed any member of the congregation, did fall into sin, public rebuke was to be given without respect of persons. The apostle also insists that his deputy is to be very cautious in admitting to Church Communion those who have lapsed. He is not “to lay hands hastily,” according to the usual form in restoration, “on any man, neither to be a partaker of other men’s sins.”

The picture of the relief of the poor of the community is both vivid and homely. It brings before our eyes not merely that far-off primitive Christian Church of Ephesus, but also the present work of a Scottish country kirk-session. When the bread-winner dies careful inquiries are to be made, whether the bereaved widow and orphans have any means of support, or can receive any aid from their relations, who are to be stirred up to do their duty to those who are left helpless. If the children or grandchildren are able to work they are to be commanded to support her who has been left a widow; but if such help fails, and if the widow is too old to earn her own living and has always borne a good character, then she is to be placed on the poor roll of the congregation and supported by the community.

According to our view, these Pastoral Epistles are to be regarded as complementary to the earlier Epistles of St. Paul, in so far as they give us information about the organization of the Gentile Christian communities. The earlier epistles, written to the various churches, reveal the principles of the growth of the organization lying within the communities themselves; while the Pastoral Epistles, written to guide the men who were to be the apostle’s deputies, and had to be instructed in his methods, show how he watched over the communities his preaching had gathered together. The apostle acted like a wise father, who encourages every appearance of independent and responsible action, but at the same time carefully guides it into the proper channels. From one point of view it can be truly said that the churches of St. Paul’s mission were thoroughly independent and acted on their own responsibilities; from another the apostle or his deputies watched over and guided this activity. There was control, but it was the control of the missionary, and partook largely of parental monition and guidance.

If we combine what is given us in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul with what we find in the Pastoral Epistles, we can discern the principles of organization within the Pauline communities. According to the ideas of the apostle, a Church of God was thoroughly organized when it found within its membership a variety of persons endowed with various spiritual gifts producing activities helpful to the whole community. That was the real basis of the common life, the divine element without which all else was of little moment, and with which everything else was a matter of executive detail. These gifts were divided into two great classes, those which served for the ministry of the Word, and those which were at the foundation of other kinds of ministry. It was from this second class of “gifts” that the ministry of the local churches proceeded. Among them we find two which crystallise into ecclesiastical office. St. Paul calls them “wise counsels” and “helps” (κυβερνήσεις and ἀντιλήψεις, 1 Cor. xii. 28); we may call them “oversight” and “subordinate service.” Whatever may have been the original principle of association, whatever suggestions of social combination earliest presented themselves to the minds of the primitive Christians in the Gentile Christian communities, whatever the human bands that bound them together, these two classes of officials were sure to emerge—the one fitted to guide and lead the brethren and the other to render subordinate service.

Some time must have elapsed before active services crystallised into offices, but it need not have been a long period. Things move fast in young communities organizing themselves for the first time, and the spiritual gift of discernment which belonged to the whole community was an instrument of organization lying ready to hand. This gift of “discernment,” when applied to teaching, implied that those who were really believed to be the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit were to be heard with reverence, and that the hearers ought to fashion their lives according to what was taught. The same gift, when applied to the discernment of abilities for rule and service, implied the power to select and bestow office upon men so gifted, and the duty of the community to obey its chosen leaders in all practical matters.

In young communities full of a fresh and active enthusiasm, feeling that the possession of “gifts” of rule and help was the fulfilment of the promise of the Master to be present with them, and that the “gift” of discernment enabled them to select their leaders with something of divine authority, activities helpful to the community would speedily become offices. There is no reason to prevent us from believing that Stephanas and the others whom the Corinthian Church are ordered to reverence were office-bearers in the full sense of the word. Harnack and many others are disposed to deny this. They argue that there is no trace of office-bearers properly so-called in St. Paul’s writings composed before his Roman captivity, although they naturally admit there must have been ministries from the very first, and that the ministries took shape under the two conceptions of “oversight” and “subordinate service.” It may be so, but the arguments do not convince me. If the προϊστάμενοι of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and to the Romans were not office-bearers they did the work of office-bearers. To assert that a period of fifty years must have elapsed before the προϊστάμενοι of the earlier epistles could become the official πρεσβύτεροι of the Pastoral Epistles (which is practically Loening’s contention), or that the development required eighty years (which Harnack requires), seems to me to be quite unwarrantable. As has been said before, things move fast in young communities and, so far as the development in organization goes, there is no reason whatever why the state of matters described in the Pastoral Epistles should not have arrived at a comparatively early date.

It is quite in accordance with what has been said, that in all the New Testament writings, and indeed in all the earlier books of discipline, the work done is always thought more of than the persons selected to do it, and office-bearers are honoured for their work’s sake rather than for their rank. The one thought running through all the earlier documents is that the power to render special service to the community—for rule and leadership according to primitive modes of thought are always founded on “service” and never on “lordship”—depends on the possession of “gifts” engrafted by the Spirit on individual character, and the occasion of these particular services is their recognition by the community, who appoint the brethren to serve it in ruling it. One of the chief services which belonged to those who were placed at the head of the Christian communities was to set an example to those under their charge, and what the leaders did all the brethren in their several places were expected to do. Hence in the New Testament writings, as well as in the earlier canons, the qualities which were to determine the selection of men to be leaders were those qualities of stable Christian character which all Christians ought to possess. The function of the missionary or his deputy, as we can see from the Pastoral Epistles, was to advise the community in their selection of those who were to be over them, and to inculcate such principles of selection as would abide permanently in their minds, and thus secure a succession of worthy office-bearers when the first missionaries of the Gospel were no longer present to advise; or to use the words of St. Clement of Rome: “Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the name (dignity) of the overseer’s office. For this cause, therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons (i.e. their first converts) and afterwards gave a further injunction that if they should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their administration”—a description of what takes place now on every mission field of the whole Christian Church.

The earlier Epistles of St. Paul show us, as has been said, that the services rendered to the local churches by those whom the brethren are commanded to obey for their works’ sake were of two kinds, which we have called “oversight” and “subordinate service.” I think that we may presume that these were office-bearers, if not from the beginning, at all events from a very early period; but we can at least say that these two different kinds of service were rendered by the leaders to the led. Later writings, both within and without the New Testament Canon, make it plain that these services were rendered by two classes of officials who bore official names, which still exist within the Christian Church. We read of pastors, overseers, elders and deacons (ποιμένες, ἐπίσκοποι, πρεσβύτεροι, διάκονοι). The references to the office-bearers of the local churches are always in the plural, and the government must have been collegiate. Whatever the special origin and primitive meanings of the first three names, they appear to have denoted the same office, and the service they gave was what the foremen or the προϊστάμενοι of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and to the Romans rendered to their respective communities. The terms “pastors” (ποιμένες) and “overseers” (επίσκοποι) describe the kind of work done, and “elder” (πρεσβύτερος) was the title of the office. This name naturally suggests a Jewish origin; for among Jewish people we find “elders” from the earliest to the latest times. The principles of social organization which were current among the Jews no doubt insensibly moulded the earliest ecclesiastical organization in Palestine; and when we find “elders” in charge of the community in Jerusalem, ready to receive the contributions for the relief of those who were suffering from the famine which overtook them in the reign of Claudius, it is impossible to doubt that the name came from their Jewish surroundings. At the same time it must always be remembered that Christian “elders” had functions entirely different from the Jewish, that the vitality of the infant Christian Communities made them work out for themselves that organization which they found to be most suitable, and that in this case nothing but the name was borrowed. The respect which St. Paul always inculcated toward the mother Church in Jerusalem and the reception among the primitive Christian congregations of converts from Jewish synagogues, can easily account for the presence of the name within Gentile Christian churches. This does not mean that every Christian congregation had presbyters designedly copied from the Jewish synagogue. The largest number probably copied their neighbours when they came to make use of the word in a technical fashion. The constant intercommunication between Christian communities which was such a feature of primitive Christianity that the keen-sighted Lucian recognized it as their special possession, promoted the gradual assimilation of constitution even when the beginnings were of different origins. But it is not necessary to suppose that the Gentile Christian communities took the word from Judaism. The term was common enough to denote rulers in the Graeco-Roman civilization; and the frequent and familiar use of the word to denote a ruling body in the ordinary social life around them, if it did not altogether suggest the use, must have at least facilitated it and ensured its spread. Besides, we must remember that the word “elder,” in the sense of ruler, is one of the commonest expressions among all nations. The English have their aldermen and the Romans had their senators, as Dr. Lightfoot has reminded us. We may add to this the well-known fact that in young Christian communities recently won from paganism the word elder is applied naturally to those who have been earliest brought to believe in Christ, and that the first office-bearers, or those to whom obedience is due, are usually taken from the first converts, like Stephanas in the Corinthian Church.

All this shows us that during the last decades of the first century each Christian congregation had for its office-bearers a body of deacons and a body of elders—whether separated into two colleges or forming one must remain unknown—and that the elders took the “oversight” while the deacons performed the “subordinate services.” These constituted the local ministry of each Christian church or congregation—for these terms were then equivalent. These men watched over the lives and behaviour of the members of the community; they looked after the poor, the infirm, and the strangers; and in the absence of members of the prophetic ministry they presided over the public worship, especially over the Holy Supper.

Before the close of the first century the labours of apostles (and under this name a large number of wandering missionaries must be included) had given birth to thousands of these local churches. They were all strictly independent self-governing communities—tiny islands in the sea of surrounding paganism—each ruled by its session or senate of elders. There is no trace of one man, one pastor, at the head of any community. The ruling body was a senate without a president, a kirk-session without a moderator; and if its members did not themselves possess the “prophetic gift,” their authority, however defined, had continually to bend before that of the “prophets” and “teachers,” to whom they had to give place in exhortation and even in presiding at the Lord’s Table. The organization of the Primitive Christian Church in the last decades of the first century without one president in the community, and with the anomalous prophetic ministry, has no resemblance to any modern ecclesiastical organization, and yet contains within it the roots of all whether congregational, presbyterian (conciliar) or episcopal.

It must not be forgotten that while each Christian community was a little self-governed republic, the visible unity of the corporate Church of Christ was never forgotten. Although each local church was an independent society, although it was not connected with other Christian communities by any organization of a political kind, it was nevertheless conscious that it belonged to a world-wide federation of equally independent churches. Its self-containedness did not produce isolation. On the contrary, every local church felt itself to be a real part of the universal and visible Church of God to which many hundreds of similar societies belonged. “All the churches of Christ,” said Tertullian, “although they are so many and so great, comprise but one primitive Church . . . and are all proved to be one in unbroken unity by the communicatio pacis, et appellatio fraternitatis et contesseratio hospitalitatis.” They kept the conception of this unity alive in their hearts by the thought that all shared the same sacraments, were taught the same divine mysteries, obeyed the same commandments of God, and shared the same hope of the same kingdom. They made this corporate unity apparent by mutual help in all Christian social work, and by boundless and brotherly hospitality to all fellow-Christians. The picture of this corporate unity was always before their eyes in the fraternal intercourse of church with church by official letters and messengers, and was made vivid by the swift succession of wandering “apostles,” “prophets” and “teachers,” who, belonging to no one community, were the ministers of the whole Church of Christ—the binding-stones which made it visibly cohere.