and also ordained or set apart their own clergy. The local Bishops, advised by their council of presbyters and ministerially assisted by their deacons, fulfilled the functions of pastoral oversight and governance in the Churches and it is at least probable that when the Bishop died the local presbytery, with the consent of the people, elected a new one from among their own number and ordained him with laying on of hands. (Cf. 1 Tim. iv. 14.) It is noteworthy that the Didache contains the injunction, addressed apparently without qualification to the community at large, "Appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord" (Didache, xv.): the Epistles of Ignatius, though implying clearly a threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, each several grade of which is evidently already a definite office to which there was presumably some specific form of appointment, throw no light upon the question of what that form of appointment was: 1 while the evidence of Clement of Rome, to which appeal is commonly made as conclusive, breaks down at the essential point. The views of Clement would not in any case necessarily represent more than the local tradition and custom of the Church in Rome: but apart from this it is worth while asking precisely what that local tradition and custom as interpreted by S. Clement was. Bishops and deacons, he tells us, were originally appointed by Apostles, and since their day they have been appointed by "men of repute" (¿Adóyıμoi ävôpes) "with the consent of the whole Church." The appointment is for life, and consequently it is irregular to depose a dulyappointed ministry. The Apostles, he considers, had foreseen that there would be likely to be disputes over "the dignity of the function of oversight," 2 and it was on that very account that they had in the beginning made definite appointments. The Bishops were originally from the Apostles as the Apostles were from Christ and Christ from God. Clement's letter is thus clear evidence that in his view :(a) All things should be done decently and in order as is plain from the orderliness of Nature and from the analogy of the Old Testament hierarchy. (b) The episcopate is an office held for life, and the deposition of duly-appointed bishops who have "blamelessly offered the gifts" is unjust and a sin against charity. 1 The silence of Ignatius is here especially significant in view of the great importance which he attaches in general to the Bishop's office. 2 ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς. (c) Originally bishops and deacons were appointed by Apostles. (d) The Episcopal office is to be a permanent one in the Church, and the Apostles intended it to be such. In this sense, therefore, there is and must necessarily be a "succession " of bishops from them. His letter throws, however, no clear light at all upon the mode of appointment to the episcopate, the forms (if any) of ordination, or the question who was or might be the minister of ordination. The phrase "men of repute" is far too vague to admit of any certain inferences being drawn from it. The possibility, therefore, that in many parts of Christendom during the first half of the second century the local communities may have been ecclesiastically independent cannot be excluded on historical grounds, though it is improbable that such local independence was of long continuance. It should be remembered that no Christian community in early times ever regarded itself as an isolated unit, but always as the expression or manifestation in a particular place of the "people of God," that is, the Church. Liability to common persecution, brotherly intercourse, mutual intercessions, the frequent exchange of correspondence and of hospitality, together with the general duty which each community recognized of building up its neighbours in the faith, prevented the isolation of the several local Churches from being more than relative and partial. Upon matters of such moment as the appointment of clergy it would be natural that where possible (now that the "apostles and prophets" were gone) they should consult one another; representatives of neighbouring Churches would be present and assist at the election and ordination of new ministers. The so-called Apostolic Church Order-one of the two early sources distinguished by Harnack as lying behind the Apostolic Canons (the Apostolic Canons in their present form date from about A.D. 341) contains the provision that "in the case where there are only a few men and less than twelve persons in a single locality who are competent to vote at the election of a Bishop, a letter must be sent to one of the neighbouring Churches where there is one well established, in order that three selected men may come from there and carefully examine the one who is worthy, etc." (This surely illustrates the words of Clement of Rome about the appointment of Bishops since the Apostles' time by "men of repute.") Later it came to be the rule that these delegates from neigh bouring Churches must themselves be Bishops. The fourth Canon of the Synod of Nicaea provides that the new Bishop must be consecrated by at least three neighbouring Bishopsthe system still in vogue-and thus the local ministry was linked on with, and commissioned by the representatives of, the ministry of the Church Universal. Not the local community in its independence, but the whole assemblage of Christian people dispersed throughout the world, was the manifestation visibly upon earth of that "people of God" whose citizenship was in heaven. The local ministries were no longer merely local, but ecumenical in sanction and commission. It was in a sense a return to the original state of affairs, except that the ecumenical and local ministries were now one and the same; the unordained ministry of men charismatically gifted had died out, and all ministry had become "institutional" in type. Of course we must not fall into the mistake of regarding the institutional and the "charismatic" ideas as mutually exclusive. Ordination was itself understood to convey a "charisma" or gift of grace for the discharge of ministerial function: but henceforward no man, however charismatically gifted, might discharge ministerial functions except he had been formally commissioned to do so through ordination. A final word must be said about the idea of succession from the Apostles. We have found something like it already in the Epistle of Clement of Rome. In addition we have certain lists of the Bishops of particular sees-notably that of Romewhich purport to have been kept from the earliest times. Thirdly there are certain well-known statements of Irenaeus, who speaks of Bishops as possessing a charisma veritatis in virtue of their office, and appeals to the existence of an unbroken tradition of Christian doctrine, handed down through the successive occupants of those sees which claimed to be of Apostolic foundation, as the guarantee of orthodoxy. It is to be observed, however, that such a claim in itself tells us nothing as to the mode of the appointment, ordination, or consecration of the Bishops in question, and consequently throws no additional light upon our problem. The successive presidents of a modern college at either of our universities are the depositaries of what we may call a continuous college tradition, in spite of the fact that they are not inducted into office by the heads of other colleges. This may appear a frivolous analogy, but it is intended to bring out the point that Irenaeus' language, while emphasizing the importance of an apostolic tradition of doctrine, tells us nothing as to either the existence or the non-existence of an Apostolical Succession of Bishops from the beginning, in the sense in which those words have been commonly understood. CONCLUSION Summing up the entire discussion we may say : (a) There is clear evidence that from the beginning of the Church in her specifically Christian character, there has existed in each locality a definitely-appointed minister or ministers to whom was entrusted under normal conditions the "stewardship" of the sacramental "mysteries "; and from the first it is probable that such ministers have been appointed by laying on of hands. (b) This ministry appears to have very early assumed the form of a bishop, presbyters, and deacons to each eucharistic assembly. The modern diocese is virtually an expansion of the primitive congregation by means of the delegation to presbyters of functions originally episcopal. (c) It is probable that originally local ministers were appointed by Apostles, Prophets, or Evangelists; But on the other hand : (d) It cannot be shown that in the sub-apostolic age there was not, at least in some localities, a stage of congregational independency due to the isolation of local communities from one another and the lack of any provincial organization. (e) Apostolical Succession in the literal sense cannot therefore be asserted as more than an historical possibility consequently, and (f) Any defence of the principle for which the idea of Apostolical Succession stands must be based upon other than strictly historical grounds. An attempt to defend the principle independently of any appeal to history has been made in Part II. of the foregoing Essay. Books. In addition to those already quoted mention should be made of Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood; Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries; Hort, The Christian Ecclesia; Allen, Christian Institutions; Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian Church. |