THE CHURCH AND
THE MINISTRY
IN THE EARLY CENTURIES
Lindsay, Thomas Martin (1843-1914)
_________________________________________________________________
PREFACE
The aim of these Lectures is to portray
the organized life of the Christian
Society as that was lived in the
thousands of little communities formed by
the proclamation of the Gospel of our
Lord during the first three centuries.
The method of description has been to
select writings which seemed to reveal
that life most clearly, and to group
round the central sources of
information illustrative evidence,
contemporary or other. The principle of
selection has been to take, as the
central authorities, those writings
which, when carefully examined, reveal
the greatest number of details. Thus,
the Epistles of St. Paul, especially
the First Epistle to the Corinthians,
have been chosen as furnishing the
greatest number of facts going to form a
picture of the life of the Christian
Society during the first century, and
the material derived from the other
canonical writings such as the Acts of
the Apostles, the Apocalypse and the Pastoral Epistles, have been
arranged
around them. Similarly the Did ache,
the Sources of the Apostolic Canons and
the Epistles of Ignatius have been
selected for the light they throw on the
life and work of the Church during the
second century. The Canons of
Hippolytus, supplemented by the
writings of Irenaeus and of Tertullian, have
furnished the basis for the
description of the organization during the
first, and the Epistles of Cyprian of
Carthage for that of the second half
of the third century.
The method used has the disadvantage
of making necessary some repetitions,
which the form of Lectures rendered
the more inevitable; but it puts the
reader in possession of the
contemporary evidence in the simplest way.
Quotations from the original
authorities have been given in English for the
most part, and, as a rule, the
translations have been taken from well known
versions—from the Ante-Nicene Library,
from the late Bishop Lightfoot’s
translations of Clement of Rome and of
Ignatius, and from Messrs. Hitchcock
and Brown’s version of the Didache.
This has been done after consultation
with friends whose advice seemed to be
too valuable to be neglected.
Dr. Moberly, in his eminently
suggestive book, Ministerial Priesthood, has
warned all students of early Church
History to beware of mental
presuppositions, unchallenged
assumptions, hypotheses or postulates. The
warning has been taken with all
seriousness, even when the perusal of his
book has suggested the thought that
mental presuppositions, like sins, are
more readily recognized in our
neighbours than in ourselves. I feel bound to
admit that three assumptions or
postulates may be found underlying these
lectures. Whether they are right or
wrong the reader must judge.
My first postulate is this. I devoutly
believe that there is a Visible
Catholic Church of Christ consisting
of all those throughout the world who
visibly worship the same God and Father,
profess their faith in the same
Saviour, and are taught by the same
Holy Spirit; but I do not see any
Scriptural or even primitive warrant
for insisting that catholicity must
find visible expression in a
uniformity of organization, of ritual of
worship, or even of formulated creed.
This visible Church Catholic of Christ
has had a life in the world
historically continuous; but the ground of this
historical continuity does not
necessarily exist in any one method of
selecting and setting apart
office-bearers who rule in the Church; its basis
is the real succession of the
generations of faithful followers of their
Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. It is
with devout thankfulness that I can
make this assumption with perfect
honesty of heart and of head, because it
relieves me from the necessity—sad,
stern and even hateful it must seem to
many pious souls who feel themselves
under its power—of unchurching and of
excluding from the “covenanted”
mercies of God, all who do not accept that
form of Church government which, to my
mind, is truest to scriptural
principles and most akin to the
ecclesiastical organization of the early
centuries.
My second postulate concerns the
ministry: There is and must be a valid
ministry of some sort in the churches
which are branches of this one Visible
Catholic Church of Christ; but I do
not think that the fact that the Church
possesses an authority which is a
direct gift from God necessarily means
that the authority must exist in a
class or caste of superior office-bearers
endowed with a grace and therefore
with a power “specific, exclusive and
efficient,” and that it cannot be
delegated to the ministry by the Christian
people. I do not see why the thought
that the authority comes from
“above,” a dogmatic truth, need in any
way Interfere with the conception
that all official ecclesiastical power
is representative and delegated to
the officials by the membership and
that it has its divine source in the
presence of Christ promised arid
bestowed upon His people and diffused
through the membership of the
Churches. Therefore when the question is put:
“Must ministerial character be in all
cases conferred from above, or may it
sometimes, and with equal validity, be
evolved from below?” it appears to me
that a fallacy lurks in the
antithesis. “From below” is used in the sense
“from the membership of the Church,”
and the inference suggested by the
contrast is that what comes “from
below,” i.e. from the membership of the
Church, cannot come “from above,” i.e.
cannot be of divine origin, warrant
and authority. Why not? May the Holy
Spirit not use the membership of the
Church as His instrument? Is there no
real abiding presence of Christ among
His people? Is not this promised
Presence something which belongs to the
sphere of God and may it not be the
source of an authority which is “from
above”? The fallacious antithesis has
apparently given birth to a
formula,—that no valid ministry can be
evolved from the membership of the
Christian congregation; and this
formula has been treated as expressing a
dogmatic truth which has been compared
with the truth of the dogma of the
Incarnation, and which has been used
as a guiding principle in the
interpretation of the references in
the New Testament writings and in other
early Christian literature to the
origin and growth of the Christian
ministry. Fortified by this supposed
dogmatic truth one Anglican divine can
contentedly rest the Scriptural
warrant for the theory of “Apostolic
Succession” and all the sad and stern
practical consequences he deduces from
it, on an hypothesis and on a detail
in a parable, and another can find
evidence for the same “gigantic
figment” in a statement of Clement of Rome
which describes the earliest
missionaries of the Christian Church doing what
missionaries of all kinds, from those
of the Church of England to those of
the Society of Friends, have done in
all generations to secure the
well-being and continuance of the
communities of believers who have been
converted to the faith of Jesus.
My third postulate belongs to an
entirely different sphere from the two
already mentioned, but it has been so
much in my mind that it ought to be
mentioned. It is that analogies in
organization illustrative of the life of
the primitive Christian communities
can be more easily and more safely found
on the mission fields of our common
Christianity than among the details of
the organized life of the long established
Churches of Christian Europe. In
the early centuries and on the
my good fortune some years ago to
spend twelve months in
there the methods, work and results of
the Missions of the various branches
of the
early centuries, to hear and to see
what the earliest writers had recounted
and described. Portions of the
Didache, of the Sources of the Apostolic
Canons, of the Canons of Hippolytus
were living practices there. One lived
among scenes described by Tertullian
and by Clement of Alexandria. The
Arabian Nights tell us of the
fortunate possessor of a magic carpet who,
when seated on his treasure, had only
to wish it to be carried anywhere in
space he desired. Historians might
long to be owners of a similar mat to
carry them anywhen backwards and
forwards throughout the past centuries. A
visit to the
civilization who have inherited those
original speculations which were the
fertile soil out of which sprang the
earliest Christian Gnosticism, is the
magic carpet which transports one back
to the times of primitive
Christianity. The visitor sees the
simple meaning of many a statement which
seemed so hard to understand with
nothing but the ancient literary record to
guide him He learns to distrust some
of the hard and fast canons of modern
historical criticism, and to grow
somewhat sceptical about the worth of many
of those “subjective pictures” which
some modern critics first construct and
then use to estimate the date,
authorship and intention of ancient
documents. He learns that the modern
western mind cannot so easily gauge the
oriental ways of thought as it
persistently imagines. Modern missionary work
appears to me to be full of helpful
illustrations of the life and
organization of the early
centuries:
These Lectures are the fruit of long,
careful, and, I trust, reverent study
of the literary remains of the early
Christian centuries. The last quarter
of a century has brought many ancient
documents to light which were formerly
unknown, and these have not been
passed over. The extent of my obligations
to others may be seen in the notes;
but the debt owed to such writers as
Bishop Lightfoot, Professor Harnack
and Dr. Hort far exceeds what can be
acknowledged in such a way.
I have to express my sense of the
great assistance given to me by my old
friend, the Rev. A. O. Johnston, D.D.,
who read the lectures in MS., and who
has also gone over the proofs with
great care. The book owes much to his
labour and to his criticisms.
THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
_________________________________________________________________
EXTRACT DECLARATION OF TRUST.
I, William Binny Webster, late Surgeon
in the H.E.I.C.S., presently residing
in
the
Theological Literature of
Lectureship similar to those of a like
kind connected with the Church of
the General Trustees of the Free
Church of Scotland the sum of £2,000
sterling, in trust, for the purpose of
founding a Lectureship in memory of
the late Reverend William Cunningham,
D.D., Principal of the Free Church
College, Edinburgh, and Professor of
Divinity and Church History therein,
and under the following conditions,
namely,—First, The Lectureship shall
bear the name, and be called, ‘The
Cunningham Lectureship.’ Second, The
Lecturer shall be a Minister or
Professor of the Free Church of Scotland,
and shall hold the appointment for not
less than two years, nor more than
three years, and be entitled for the
period of his holding the appointment
to the income of the endowment as
declared by the General Trustees, it being
understood that the Council after
referred to may occasionally appoint a
Minister or Professor from other
denominations, provided this be approved of
by not fewer than Eight Members of the
Council, and it being further
understood that the Council are to
regulate the terms of payment of the
Lecturer. Third, The Lecturer shall be
at liberty to choose his own subject
within the range of Apologetical,
Doctrinal, Controversial, Exegetical,
Pastoral, or Historical Theology,
including what bears on Missions, Home and
Foreign, subject to the consent of the
Council. Fourth, The Lecturer shall
be bound to deliver publicly at
subjects thus chosen at some time
immediately preceding the expiry of his
appointment, and during the Session of
the
Lectures to be not fewer than six in
number, and to be delivered in presence
of the Professors and Students under
such arrangements as the Council may
appoint; the Lecturer shall be bound
also to print and publish, at his own
risk, not fewer than 750 copies of the
Lectures within a year after their
delivery, and to deposit three copies
of the same in the Library of the New
College; the form of the publication
shall be regulated by the Council.
Fifth, A Council shall be constituted,
consisting of (first) Two Members of
their own body, to be chosen annually
in the month of March, by the Senatus
of the
chosen annually by the General
Assembly, in addition to the Moderator of the
said Free Church of
said
Assembly for the time being, the
Procurator or Law Adviser of the Church,
and myself the said William Hinny
Webster, or such person as I may nominate
to be my successor: the Principal of
the said College to be Convener of the
Council, and any Five Members duly
convened to be entitled to act
notwithstanding the non-election of
others. Sixth, The duties of the Council
shall be the following:—(first), To
appoint the Lecturer and determine the
period of his holding the appointment,
the appointment to be made before the
close of the Session of College
immediately preceding the termination of the
previous Lecturer’s engagement;
(second), To arrange details as to the
delivery of the Lectures, and to take
charge of any additional income and
expenditure of an incidental kind that
may be connected therewith, it being
understood that the obligation upon
the Lecturer is simply to deliver the
Course of Lectures free of expense to himself.
Seventh, The Council shall be
at liberty, on the expiry of five
years, to make any alteration that
experience may suggest as desirable in
the details of this plan, provided
such alterations shall be approved of
by not fewer than Eight Members of the
Council.
_________________________________________________________________
CONTENTS
LECTURE I
THE NEW TESTAMENT CONCEPTION OF THE
The Promise of the Church (Ecclesia)
3
Jewish and Greek Meanings of Ecclesia
4
The Word has its Home in the Pauline
Literature 5
It includes five great Thoughts
5
i. Fellowship with Christ and with the
Brethren 6-9
Fellowship with Christ manifested in
“gifts” to the Church 8
Fellowship among Believers implied
in the early Names for Christians 9
ii. Unity 10-15
Church and Churches 10
The Unity of the Church a primary
Verity of the Christian Faith 13
iii. The Church is a visible Community
16-24
It can be seen in every Christian Community
large or small for it is an
ideal Reality
16
This Ideal ought to be made manifest
18
His leading thought was “fellowship”
(koinōnia) 20
How he grouped his Churches 21
The great “Collection” 22
The Methods of the Twelve 23
iv. The Church has Authority
24-33
The Promise of Authority made to St.
Peter, to the Twelve and to the whole
Company of the Believers
25
How these Promises were interpreted
by the primitive Church 32
The Self-government and
32
v. The Church is a Sacerdotal Society
33-37
The ideal
The sacerdotal Character belongs to
the whole Membership 34
Luther on the sacerdotal Character
of the Church 35
No Idea of a maimed Sacerdotalism in
primitive Times 36
LECTURE II
A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN APOSTOLIC
TIMES
The local Churches in primitive Times
met in private Houses 41
The Brethren had three Kinds of
Meetings 43
i. The Meeting for Edification
44
The Service and the Arrangement of
the Parts 44
Almost unlimited Freedom in Worship
49
ii. The Meeting for Thanksgiving
(Eucharistic) 50
The Details indistinctly given
50
May be reconstructed 52
iii. The Congregational Business
Meeting 54
It was the Centre of the Unity and the
Seat of the
Church
55
It settled even the civil Disputes
among the Brethren 55
Every local Church was a little
self-governing Republic 57
Leadership within the Christian
Communities had a Distinctive Character, and
implied Service and the possession of
“Gifts”
62
Traces of a double Ministry, the
prophetic and the local 64
These Ministries quite separate, but
the Men composing them might belong to
both
66
LECTURE III
THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY OF THE
The Christian Community is a Body of
which the Spirit of Christ is the Soul
69
The “Gift” to “speak the Word of God”
the most prized 70
Its Complement was the “Gift” to
“discern” or test those who “spoke the Word
of God”
70
The prophetic Ministry was three-fold,
Apostles, Prophets and Teachers
73
This three-fold Ministry is to be
traced throughout the Church of the first
and second Centuries
74
i. Apostles were the Missionaries who
founded the Churches 75
Various Classes of Apostles 76
Their Number increased during the
earlier Decades 82
The wider and narrower uses of the
Word “Apostle” 85
The special Character of Apostolic
Work and Authority 87
ii.
Prophets were found in every Christian
Community, and sometimes wandered
from one to another
90
What Prophecy was 93
Prophecy and Ecstasy 94
Prophecy and visions 94
Prophets were not Office-bearers
95
They exercised a great deal of
influence in matters of discipline, and had a
unique place in the restoration of the
lapsed
96
Wandering Prophets and the
Firstfruits 97
Their Claims were to be tested by
the “Gift” of Discernment 99
False Prophets 100
iii. Teachers, their special Work
103
The Prophets of the Old and of the Now
Testaments compared 106
LECTURE IV
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST
CENTURY—CREATING ITS MINISTRY
Traces of several Types of
Organization in the New Testament
113
The Seven of Acts vi. and the Jewish
Village Community. 115
Elders in Churches outside
The Supremacy of James in
Kindred of Jesus
119
Office-bearers in the Pauline Gentile
Churches 121
The Prohistamenei and the Relation of
Patron and Client. 123
The heathen Confraternities and their
Organization 125
The Jewish Synagogues outside
The
Confraternities
131
They had an external Resemblance to
both Synagogue and Confraternity 132
The Organization in the Pastoral
Epistles 137
The Information given in the Pastoral
Epistles is complementary to what is
to be found in the earlier Epistles of
St. Paul
148
Names for Office-bearers in early
Christian Literature 152
Episcopus designates the Kind of Work
done and is not the Name of an Office
153
The Meaning and Origin of the
Christian “Elders” 153
The Churches in the first Century were
ruled by a College of
Presbyter-bishops who were assisted by
a Body of Deacons
154
The Unity of the Church never
forgotten in the
Churches
155
Note on “Presbyter” and “Bishop”
Harnack’s Theory that Bishops were
distinct from Presbyters from the first
157
The Witness of Clement 159
The Identity of the New Testament
“Presbyters” and “Bishops” 163
LECTURE V
THE CHURCHES OF THE SECOND AND THIRD
CENTURIES—CHANGING THEIR MINISTRY
The Ministry of the first Century was
changed during the second 169
The Ministry in the Didaché 171
The Congregational Meeting 173
The Prophetic Ministry 174
Elected Office-bearers 175
The Ministry in the Sources of the
Apostolic Canons 177
The smallest Christian Communities to
be organized under Bishop or Pastor,
Elders and Deacons
178
A Ministry of Women 181
The Reader and uneducated Bishops
182
The Document shows a three-fold
Ministry in a transitional Stage
183
The Letters of Ignatius 186
Their Characters and Contents
187
They plead for Unity through
Obedience to the Office‑bearers 190
The Organization they bear Witness to:
a Bishop, a Session of Elders and a
Body of Deacons, which form one
whole
196
They reveal a three-fold Ministry
but not Episcopacy 198
The Authority of the Bishop or
Pastor limited 198
The Powers of the Congregational
Meeting 200
An unpaid Ministry explains how the
smallest Body of Christians could have a
complete Organization
200
The Organization of Bishop, Session of
Elders and body of Deacons became
almost universal within the
Empire
204
The Reasons for the Change from a
two-fold collegiate Ministry to a
three-fold Ministry and the Paths by
which the Change advanced can only be
guessed
205
The Church has always the Power to
change its Ministry 210
LECTURE VI
THE FALL OF THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY AND
THE CONSERVATIVE REVOLT
The Work of Edification began to pass
from the prophetic Ministry to the
ordinary Office-bearers
213
The Causes which led to the Fall of
the prophetic Ministry are not
specifically known but may be
guessed
217
The Need to make a combined Stand
against Heresies 217
The Gnostic Treatment of Christianity
218
Marcion’s Canon, Creed, and Churches
219
Irenaeus voiced the Need which his
Time felt 221
The Guarantee for Christian Truth is
to be found in the Succession of
Office-bearers in the Churches from
the Times of the Apostles
223
Office-bearers were supposed to have a
charisma veritatis 227
Effect of this on the prophetic
Ministry 228
The Growth of a Desire to come to some
Accommodation with the Empire 229
The Apologists 230
The Deterioration of Prophecy
233
Protests against the silent Movement
in the Church 235
The Phrygian Movement the Centre and
Exaggeration of what was affecting the
whole of the Churches
236
Montanism properly speaking was
conservative 238
Proof from Montanist Prophecy
239
The Break with the “great” Church
243
The Fate of the later Montanists
243
The Organization of the Churches after
the Montanists were outside 244
What the Canons of Hippolytus tell us
245
A three-fold Ministry of Bishop,
Elders, and Deacons 245
Qualifications, Choice and Ordination (which
might be done by an Elder) of
Bishops
246
Elders and Bishops were theoretically
equal but practically very distinct
247
The two Meetings for public Worship
250
The Meeting for Exhortation 251
The Eucharistic Service 252
The Distribution of the Offerings
255
Comparison between the Organization of
the Churches in the Beginning of the
third Century and those of modern
Times
259
LECTURE VII
MINISTRY CHANGING TO PRIESTHOOD
In the Course of the third Century the
Conceptions of the local and of the
universal Church began to change
265
The Changes led in the End to the Idea
that a local Church was a Body of
Christians obedient to their Bishop
and that the universal Church was the
Federation of these obedient
Communities
266
The Phases in this Change 266
The novel Position and Autocracy of
the Bishop needed a Sanction which was
found in the legal Fiction of an
Apostolic Succession
278
The Idea first emerged in the Quarrels
between Hippolytus and Calixtus 280
The Work and Influence of Cyprian
283
The Decian Persecution 287
The Lapsed 290
The “Authority” of the Martyr
confronts the “Authority” of the Bishop 295
Cyprian’s Theory of the Position and
Power of the Bishop 299
The Bishop is the Representative of
Christ and has the Right to forgive Sins
305
Cyprian’s maimed Sacerdotalism: the
Bishop a unique Priest and the Eucharist
a unique Sacrifice
307
Cyprian’s Method of exhibiting the
universality of the visible Church by
Means of Councils
313
His Theory confronted by a Roman one
which was in the End triumphant in the
West
317
LECTURE VIII
THE ROMAN STATE RELIGION AND ITS
EFFECTS ON THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH
The Instrument for effecting the
Grouping of federated Churches round the
definite Centres was the Council or
Synod
323
Sohm’s Theory of the Origin and
Meaning of Synods 327
The Synod was really the Application
of the Congregational Meeting to a
wider ecclesiastical Sphere
334
This democratic Principle of
Organization confronted with an imperialist
one; the two subsisted for long side
by side
335
Councils became a regular part of the
Organization of the Churches before
the End of the third Century
336
The same Period saw other Changes
337
In the more compact Organization of
the federated Churches the Roman
Organization for the State pagan
Religion was largely copied
340
The religious Reforms of Augustus
341
The Worship of the Emperors 342
The Organization of the Priesthood of
the imperial Cult 348
This Organization copied within the
Christian Churches 350
The Churches also copied the State
Temple Service 353
The Church thus organized was still a
Federation of Churches 358
Numerous and flourishing
the Federation
359
After the Conversion of Constantine
these outside Christians were vehemently
persecuted by the State, which only
acknowledged the federated Churches
359
APPENDIX
Sketch of the History of modern
Controversy about the Office‑bearers in the
primitive
364
INDEXES
Index of References to Contemporary
Authorities, Canonical and Non-canonical
379
Index of Names and Subjects 386
_________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER I
THE NEW TESTAMENT CONCEPTION OF THE
CHURCH
And I say also unto thee, that thou
art Petros, and on this
build My Church (Ecclesia); and the
gates of Hades shall not prevail against
it.” [1] Our Lord was far from
uttered these words. He was sojourning
in an almost wholly pagan land. The
rocks overhanging the path were
covered with the mementos of a licentious
cult; and in the neighbouring city of
built and consecrated a temple to the
Emperor Augustus, who was there
worshipped as a god. [2] It was among
scenes which showed the lustful
passions of man’s corrupt heart and
the statecraft of Imperial Rome seating
themselves on the throne of God, that
Jesus made to His followers the
promise which He has so marvellously
fulfilled.
The word translated Church is
Ecclesia—a word that had a history both
theocratic and democratic, and that
came trailing behind it memories both to
the Jews who were then listening to
Him, and to the Greeks, who, at a later
period, received His Gospel. To the
Jew, the Ecclesia had been the assembly
of the congregation of
Tabernacle of Jehovah by men blowing
silver trumpets. To the Greek the
Ecclesia was the sovereign assembly of
the free Greek city-state, [4]
summoned by the herald blowing his
horn through the streets of the town. To
the followers of Jesus it was to be
the congregation of the redeemed and
therefore of the free, summoned by His
heralds to continually appear in the
presence of their Lord, who was always
to be in the midst of them. It was to
be a theocratic democracy.
The New, if it is to be lasting, must
always have its roots in the Old; and
the phrase “My Ecclesia” recalled the
past and foretold the future. The
roots were the memories the word brought
both to Jew and to Greek; and the
promise and the potency of the future
lay in the word “My.” The Ecclesia had
been the congregation of Jehovah; it
was in the future, without losing
anything of what it had possessed, to
become the congregation of Jesus the
Christ. Its heralds, like James, the
brother of our Lord, could apply to it
the Old Testament promises, and see in
its construction the fulfilment of
the saying of Amos about the
rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David; [5] or,
like
the prayer of the Psalm, “Remember
thine ecclesia, which Thou hast purchased
of old, which Thou hast redeemed to be
the tribe of Thine inheritance.” [6]
It had been the self-governing Greek
republic, ruled by elected
office-bearers; hereafter the
communities of Christians, which were to be
the ecclesiae, were to be little
self-governing societies where the
individual rights and responsibilities
of the members would blend
harmoniously with the common good of
all.
The word with its memories and
promises appealed to none of our Lord’s “Sent
Ones” more strongly than to
Hebrews,” and the apostle to the
Gentiles. The term “ecclesia” has its home
in the Pauline literature. [7] It is
met with 110 times within the New
Testament, and of these 86 occur in
the Epistles of St. Paul and in the Acts
of the Apostles. We naturally turn to
the writings of
expounding the thought which is
contained in the term. When we do so we are
entitled to say that the conception
contains at least five different ideas
which embody the essential features of
the “
The New Testament Church is fellowship
with Jesus and with the brethren
through Him; this fellowship is
permeated with a sense of unity; this united
fellowship is to manifest itself in a
visible society; this visible society
has bestowed upon it by our Lord a
divine authority; and it is to be a
sacerdotal society. These appear to be
the five outstanding elements in the
New Testament conception of the
1. The Church of Christ is a
fellowship. It is a fellowship with Jesus
Christ; that is the divine element in
it. It is a fellowship with the
brethren; that is the human element in
it. The Rock on which the Church was
to be built was a man confessing—not
the man apart from his confession, as
Romanists insist, nor the confession
apart from the man, as many Protestants
argue. It was a man in whom long
companionship with Jesus and the revelation
from the Father had created a personal
trust in His Messianic mission; [8]
and the faith which had grown out of
the fellowship had the mysterious power
of making the fellowship which had
created it more vivid and real; for
faith, in its primitive sense of
personal trust, is fellowship become
self-conscious. Faith is what makes
fellow-ship know itself to be
fellowship, and not haphazard social
intercourse.
The faith of Peter, seer as he was
into divine mysteries, and prophet as he
was, able to utter what he had seen,
did not involve a very adequate
apprehension of the fellowship he had
confessed. He knew so little about its
real meaning that shortly after his
confession he made a suggestion which
would have destroyed it; [9] a thought
prompted by the Evil One succeeded
the revelation from the Father—so
strangely and swiftly do inspirations of
God and temptations of the Devil
succeed each other in the minds of men. The
sad experience of Peter has been
shared by the Church in all generations. He
did not cease to be the Rock-Man in
consequence; nor has the promise failed
the Church which was founded on him
and on his confession, although it has
shared his weakness and sin.
makes the Church. The churches
addressed in his epistles are described as in
Christ Jesus. He is careful to impress
on believers the personal relation in
which they stand to their Lord, even
when he is addressing the whole Church
to which they belong. If he writes to
the
[10] he is careful to add “to them
that are sanctified in Christ Jesus,
called to be saints”; and in his other
epistles he addresses the brethren
individually as “saints,” “saints and
faithful brethren,” “all that are in
never lost in the society, and he is
never alone and separate. The bond of
union is not an external framework
impressed from without, but a sense of
fellowship springing from within. The
believer’s union to Christ, which is
the deepest of all personal things,
always involves something social, The
call comes to him singly, but seldom
solitarily.
Perhaps, however,
is the basis of the Church, comes out
most clearly in the way he speaks of
the “gifts” of grace, the charismata,
which manifest the abiding presence of
our Lord in His Church and His
continuing fellowship with His people. [12]
He enumerates them over and over
again. He points to “apostles,” the
missionary heralds of the Gospel; to
“prophets,” to whom the Spirit had
given special powers for the
edification of the brethren; to “teachers,” who
are wise with the wisdom of God, and
have those divine intuitions which the
apostle calls “knowledge”; to
“pastors,” who feed the flock in one
community. He speaks of “helps”
(antilēpseis) or powers to assist the sick,
the tempted and the tried; of
“insight” to give wise counsels; of gifts of
rule (kubernēseis); of gifts of
healing, and in general of all kinds of
service. They are all gifts of the
Spirit, and are all so many different
manifestations of the presence of
Jesus and of the living fellowship which
His people have with Him. [13]
These various gifts are bestowed on
different members of the Christian
society for the edification of all,
and they serve to show that it is one
organism, where the whole exists for
the parts, and each part for the whole
and for all the other parts. They also
show that the Christian society is
not a merely natural organism; there
is divine life and power within it,
because it has the abiding presence of
Christ; and the proof of His presence
is the possession and use of these
various “gifts,” all of which come from
the one Spirit of Christ in fulfilment
of the promise that He will never
leave nor forsake His Church. Their
presence is a testimony to the presence
of the Master which each Christian
community can supply. It is a Church of
Christ if His presence is manifested
by these fruits of the Spirit which
come from the exercise of the “gifts”
which the Spirit has bestowed upon it;
for the Church as well as the
individual Christian is to be known by its
fruits. [14]
This sense of hidden fellowship with
its Lord was the secret of the Church.
It was a bond uniting its members and
separating them from outsiders more
completely than were the initiated
into the pagan mysteries sundered from
those who had not passed through the
same introductory rites. While Jesus
lived their fellowship with Him was
the external thing which distinguished
them from others. They were His
disciples (mathētai) gathered round a
centre, a Person whom they called
Rabbi, Master, Teacher—names they were
taught not to give to another. They
shared a common teaching and drank in
the same words of wisdom from the same
lips; but even then they could not be
called a “school,” for they were
united by the bond of a common hope and a
common future. They were to share in
the coming
through their relation to their
Master. After His departure the other side
of the fellowship became the prominent
external thing—their relation to each
other because of their relation to
their common Lord. New names arose to
express the change, names suggesting
the relation in which they stood to
each other. They were the “brethren,”
the “saints,” and they had a
fellowship (koinōnia) with each
other. [15] This thought of fellowship, as
we shall see, was the ruling idea in
all Christian organization. All
Christians within one community were
to live in fellowship with each other;
different Christian communities were
to have a common fellowship. Visible
fellowship with each other, the
outcome of the hidden fellowship with Jesus,
was to be at once the leading
characteristic of all Christians and the bond
which united them to each other and
separated them from the world lying
outside.
2. The second characteristic of the
There was one assembly of the
congregation of
of the Greek city-state. There is one
It must be admitted that the word
Church is seldom used in the New Testament
to designate one universal and
comprehensive society. On the contrary, out
of the 110 times in which the word
occurs, no less than 100 do not contain
this note of a wide-spreading unity.
In the overwhelming majority of cases
the word “church” denotes a local
Christian society, varying in extent from
all the Christian congregations within
a province of the Empire to a small
assembly of Christians meeting
together in the house of one of the brethren.
word in its universal application; and
he does it in two epistles only—those
to the Ephesians and to the
Colossians—both of them dating from his Roman
captivity. [17] But there are
numberless indications that the thought of the
unity of the
The Christians he addresses are all
brethren, all saints, whether they be in
praised because they had been
“imitators of the churches of God which are in
Christ.” [18] The Epistles to the
Corinthians are full of exhortations to
unity within the local church, and the
warnings are always based on
principles which suggest the unity of
the whole wide fellowship of
believers. The divisions in the church
at
misguided apostolic partizanship which
implied a lack of belief in Christian
unity at the centre; the apostle
repudiates this by holding forth the unity
of Christ, and by pointing to the one
He has the same message for all the
local churches. However varied in
environment they may be, these local
churches have common usages, and ought
to unite in showing a common sympathy
with each other. [20]
Besides these minor indications of the
thought, we have, in various of his
epistles what may be called its poetic
expression. The
such a unity that it has thrown down
all the walls of race, sex, and social
usages which have kept men separate.
[21] It has reconciled Jew and Gentile.
It has bridged the gulf between the
past of
apostolic Christianity. [22]
These thoughts and phrases, which run
through all the epistles of
lead directly to the description of
the glorious unity of the one Church of
Christ which fills the great Epistle
to the Ephesians. Thus, though it is
true that we cannot point to a single
use of the word “church” in the
earlier epistles which can undoubtedly
be said to mean a universal Christian
society, the thought of this unity of
all believers runs through them all.
The conception of the unity of the
possessions of
but it is only in the writings of his
Roman captivity that it attains to its
fullest expression. [23]
This unity of the
something essentially spiritual. It is
a reality, but a reality which is
more ideal than material. It can never
be adequately represented in a merely
historical way. It is true that we can
trace the beginnings of the formation
of Christian communities, and the
gradual federation of these Christian
societies into a wide-spreading union
of confederate churches; but that only
faintly expresses the thought of the
unity of the
true that we can see in the fellowship
of Christians the illustration of the
pregnant philosophical thought that it
is not good for man to be alone, and
that personality itself can only be
rightly conceived when taken along with
the thought of fellowship. [24] Apart,
however, from all surface facts and
philosophical ideas, there is
something deeper in the unity of the Christian
Church, something which lies
implicitly in the unformed faith of every
believer, that in personal union with
Christ there is union with the whole
body of the redeemed, and that man is
never alone either in sin or in
salvation. The unity of the
Christian faith: “There is One Body,
and One Spirit, even as ye are called
in one hope of your calling; One Lord,
One Faith, One Baptism, One God and
Father of all, Who is over all and
through all and in all.” [25] And because
the Unity of the
faith, it can never be adequately
represented in any outward polity, but
must always be, in the first instance
at least, a religious experience. Its
source and centre can never be an
earthly throne, but must always be that
heavenly place where Jesus sits at the
Right Hand of God. [26]
This enables us to see how the word
“church” can be used, as it is in the
New Testament, to denote communities
of varying size, from the sum total of
all the Christian communities on earth
down to the tiny congregation which
met in the house of Philemon. For the
unity of the Christian Church is, in
the first instance, the oneness of an
ideal reality, and is not confined
within the bounds of space and time as
merely material entities are. It can
be present in many places at the same
time, and in such a way that, as
Ignatius says, “Where Jesus Christ is,
there is the whole Church.” [27] The
congregation at
the whole Church in its all-embracing unity—not
a Body of Christ, for there
is but one Body of Christ; not part of
the Body of Christ, for Christ is not
divided; but the Body of Christ in its
unity and filled with the fulness of
His powers. [28] It is in this One
Body, present in every Christian society,
that our Lord has placed His “gifts”
or charismata, which enable the Church
to perform its divine functions; and
all the spiritual actions of the
tiniest community, such as the Church
in the house of Nymphas—Prayer,
Praise, Preaching, Baptism, the Holy
Supper—are actions of the whole Church
of Christ.
The Christians of the early centuries
clung to this thought, and we have a
long series of writers, from Victor of
Rome, [29] in the second century,
down to Clement of Alexandria and
Origen, [30] who tell us that the whole
Church of the redeemed, with Christ
and the angels, is present in the public
worship of the individual
congregation. The promise of the Master, that
where two or three were gathered
together in His Name there would He be in
the midst of them, was placed side by
side with the thought in the Epistle
to the Hebrews that believers are
surrounded with a great cloud of
witnesses; and the combination
suggested that in the simplest action of the
smallest Christian fellowship there
was the presence and the power of the
whole
when he says in a well-known passage:
“Accordingly, where there is no joint
session of the ecclesiastical order,
you Offer, Baptize, and are Priest
alone for yourself; for where three
are there the Church is, although they
be laity.” [31]
3. The Church of our Lord’s promise
was to be a visible community. This note
of visibility is suggested by the word
ecclesia itself, and by the whole
environment of its earliest Christian
use.
The “congregation of
city-state had been visible things.
The time of the promise suggested a
visible community. It came when the
visible people of
refused to accept Jesus as the
Messiah. His Church was set over against the
earliest uses of the word ecclesia
refer unmistakably to visible
communities. When
something more than an abstraction. He
haled men and women to prison and
confined real bodies within real stone
walls. The churches spoken of in the
Acts and in the Epistles were
societies of men and women, living in
families, coming together for public
worship, and striving in spite of many
infirmities to live the life of new
obedience to which they had been called.
They were little societies in the
world, connected with it on all sides and
yet not of it—lamps set on lamp-stands
to enlighten the darkness of
surrounding paganism. The “gifts” of
the Spirit, which manifested the
presence of Christ, were seen at work
in the public assembly of the
congregation, and were given to edify
a visible society.
The two universal rites of the new
society—Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper—show that it was a visible
thing.
entrance into the Church was by the
visible rite of Baptism, and that he
himself had come into the Church by
this door. [32] The Lord’s Supper was a
visible social institution, and could
only occupy the place it did in a
visible society. [33]
Even the Church Universal, which is
described in the Epistle to the
Ephesians, is a visible Church. It is
an ideal reality; but an ideal Church
is not invisible because it is ideal.
It can be seen in any Christian
community, great or small; seen in a
measure by the eye of sense, but more
truly by the eye of faith. For it is
one of the privileges of faith, when
strengthened by hope and by love, to
see the glorious ideal in the somewhat
poor material reality. It was thus
that
Christ made visible in the Christian
community of
city of
where the thoroughness of character,
inherited from the early Roman
colonists, had pushed the sensuous
side of Greek civilization into all
manner of excesses, until the city had
become a by-word for foul living, and
religion itself had become an
incentive to lust. [34] This environment had
tainted the Christian society.
has made us see the very Love-feasts,
which introduced the Holy Supper,
changed into banquets of display on
the part of the rich, while the poor
were swept into corners or compelled
to wait till their wealthier brethren
were served. He has shown us petty
rivalries disguising themselves under the
mask of faithfulness to eminent
apostolic teachers. He has depicted the
tainted morals of the city appearing
unchecked within the Christian society.
What a picture the heathen satirist
Lucian, with his keen eye and his
outspoken tongue, would have drawn of
such a community!
frailty, the feebleness to resist the
evil communications and the
fickleness; and yet he saw in that
community the Body of Christ. He needed
the love that “beareth all things,
that believeth all things, and that
hopeth all things,” to make his vision
clear—and that is perhaps the reason
why the wonderful chapter on Christian
love comes in the middle of this
epistle; but his vision was clear, and
he saw the life there with its
potency and promise. He could say to
that Church Ye are the Body of Christ.
He could see it, as he saw the
and grounded in love, gradually
strengthened to apprehend with all saints
the height, the depth, the length and
the breadth of that love of Christ
which passeth knowledge, and at last
filled with all the fulness of God.
All things earthly have a double
element, whether they be of good or evil
report. They are in the present and
they are making for the future. They are
what they are to be. It is the same
with all things belonging to
Christianity on the human side. We are
“sons of God,” and yet we “wait for
the adoption”; we are redeemed, and
yet our redemption “draweth nigh.” Those
who “have been saved” are enjoined to
“work out their own salvation.” So it
is with the
definitely taught by the very ways in
which
“ to see the Church Universal in the
individual Christian community. [36]
It will be admitted, however, that
ideals are given us to be made manifest
to the eye of sense as well as to the
vision of faith. and that a duty is
laid upon every Christian and upon
every Christian society to make the
universality of the
apparent to the eyes of sense. If the
duty has been but scantily performed
since the beginning of the third
century, we may find that the neglect has
come from abandoning apostolic methods
in favour of others suggested by the
great pagan empire of
the inherent unity of the
the mind of the great apostle to the
Gentiles, and it may be useful to see
how he set himself to the task.
One thing meets us at the outset. He
would not for the sake of an external
universality agree to anything which
would set limits on the real
universality of the
which Jesus had made His people free
was of more importance in His eyes than
the manifestation of the visibility of
the universal fellowship of
Christians with each other. Jewish
believers were inclined to think that the
practice of circumcision “embodied the
principle of the historical
continuity of the Church,” [37] and
that no one who was outside the circle
of the “circumcised,” no matter how
strong his faith nor how the fruits of
the Spirit were manifest in his life
and deeds, could plead the “security of
the Divine Covenant,” For this they
could give reasons stronger than are
brought forward by many who, in our
own day, insist on different external
“successions” as marks of catholicity.
The Scripture had said: “My covenant
shall be in your flesh, an everlasting
covenant.” [38] The Saviour himself
had been circumcised on the eighth
day. He had never, in so many words,
either publicly to the people or
privately to His disciples, declared that
circumcision was no longer to be the
sign of the covenant of God.
something defined by what the Jews
believed to be the “principle of the
historical continuity of the Church,”
would be to destroy the real for a
limited, though more sensibly visible,
universality. He bent his whole
energies to break down this false
principle of continuity which placed the
“succession” in something external,
and not in the possession and
transmission from generation to
generation of the “gifts” of the Spirit
within the community. This done, he
used his administrative powers, and they
were those of a statesman, to create
channels for the flow of the
manifestation of the visible unity of
the
His ruling thought was to provide that
all the various Christian communities
should manifest their real brotherhood
in the cultivation of the “fruits of
the Spirit.” The method of carving out
a visibly universal Church by means
of regulations affecting organization
and external form is not without its
attractions, which are irresistible to
minds of the lawyer type and
training, such as we see afterwards in
Cyprian of Carthage. It seems a short
and easy method of showing that the
whole Church is visibly one. But it was
not Paul’s method. He seems to have
thought as little about the special
“construction of sheep-folds” as his
Master. What concerned him was that the
sheep should be gathered into one
flock around the One Shepherd. He nowhere
prescribed a universal ecclesiastical
polity, still less did he teach that
the universality of the Christian
brotherhood must be made visible in this
way. He regarded all the separate
churches of Christ as independent
self-governing societies. He strove to
implant in all of them the principle
of brotherly dealing with one another,
and he dug channels in which the
streams of the Spirit might flow in
the practical manifestation of Christian
fellowship.
Fellowship (koinōnia), word and
thought, is what filled his mind. All the
brethren within one Church were to
have fellowship with each other. The
local churches within a definite
region were to be in close fellowship. The
churches among the Gentiles were to
maintain brotherly relations with the
Mother-Church in
learnt from what the apostle says in
Gal. ii. 9. [39] He tells us that the
apostles to the Jews, and he the
apostle to the Gentiles, gave each other
the right hand of fellowship, because
they recognized that they had a common
faith in the same Christ. It was the
recognition of a common belief in the
One Christ, the knowledge that they
all had within them a new faith which
had revolutionised their lives, and
was to express itself in their whole
character and conduct, that made them
feel the kinship with each other which
was expressed in the common name
“brethren.” All down through the early
centuries this idea that Christians
form one brotherhood finds abundant
expression. Brotherhood alternates
with Ecclesia in the oldest sets of
ecclesiastical canons, [40] while
omnis fraternitas and pasa hē adelphotēs
are used to denote the whole of
Christendom. [41]
The graceful deference which
welfare of the poor “saints” at
needs; [42] the letters he asks to be
read to all the members of the
churches to which they are addressed,
and sometimes to other churches also;
[43] the eagerness with which he
communicates the fact that the church he is
writing to enjoys a reputation for
hospitality towards wayfaring brethren;
[44] the salutations his letters contain
from one church to another, [45]
and from individual Christians to the
churches; [46] the messages sent by
his assistants; his and their frequent
journeyings from church to church—are
all evidences of his unwearied efforts
to make the universality of the
Christian brotherhood widely
manifest.
He did more. He grouped his churches
in a statesmanlike way so that each
could support the others. His
statesmanship discerned the advantages which
the imperial system, with its trade
routes, its postal arrangements and its
provincial capitals, gave not merely
for the propagation of the Gospel, but
for the fellowship of the churches.
of Achaia, and the second Epistle to
the Corinthians is addressed to all the
Christians within that important Roman
province. [47] Round
were grouped the churches of
probability, grouped round
Thessalonica, [50] and those of
another group, although we are not
told what the centre was. [51]
While engaged in giving visibility to
the unity of the churches he had
planted
visibly with the churches of
thought of a visible fellowship
between Jew and Gentile, and the union which
was symbolised when Barnabas and he
gave and received the right hand of
fellowship with Peter, James and John,
was never far from his thoughts. He
thought of One Church of Christ which
embraced Jew and Gentile all the world
over. [52]
But perhaps the evidence of the
apostle’s method of implanting a sense of a
visible unity within the
and motive of the great collection for
the saints at
so large a place in his
epistles.
This great collection was no mere
spontaneous outburst of Christian charity
like the previous succours sent to the
poor of
carefully-planned attempt to unite a
host of independent churches, which
represented wide areas, in
co-operative brotherly action. The preparations
occupied more than a year’s time. The
principle of representation was
introduced. Each group of contributing
churches sent deputies, all of whom
joined the apostle at different places
and at different dates, and
accompanied him to
anxiety which the apostle displayed in
the careful arrangement of all the
details; the patience with which he
awaited the complete mustering of the
delegates on the road; the
determination that nothing should prevent him
from accompanying the delegates to
danger nor the hindrance of cherished
plans to visit
show that he regarded it as the
fulfilment of long cherished plans for
making visible the fellowship of all
believers in the way that best
commended itself to his mind.
[53]
It may be that the success of this
mustering of his mission churches, this
triumphant experiment of co-operation
and re-presentation, combined with the
assurance that Jew and Gentile were at
last dwelling harmoniously within the
One Household of God, kindled the
thoughts which find expression in the
epistles of his Roman captivity. The
unity of the wide-spreading Church of
Christ was at last made visible to the
eyes of sense, not by uniformity of
external polity, but by the
manifestation of brotherly love. The actual
unity of all believers was conspicuous
in this great fruit of the Spirit of
Christ.
If we follow the accounts given us in
the Acts, the tests of what was
required for visible fellowship by the
leaders of the church in
did not differ greatly from those
demanded by
their custom when they heard of some
new and unexpected appearance of faith
in Jesus to send down some one to
inquire about it. Peter and John were sent
to
preaching of Philip. [54] Barnabas was
sent down to
errand. [55] The tests applied in both
cases seem to have been: Are there
any manifestations of the fruits of
the Spirit in the lives of the new
converts? The case of
proclaimed there, we know not how or
by whom. The apostles at
to have had nothing to do with the
proclamation. An infant church had come
into being without their guidance or
assistance. Its birth is unrecorded;
its earliest history unknown; the
congregation is in being before the
apostles seem to have heard of it.
When the delegate from
and made his inquiries, what satisfied
him was that the grace of God was
manifestly with the brethren there.
The believers in
delegate from
faith found its proper outcome in a
renewed life. That was enough for
fellowship or visible and fraternal
union. We see no attempt to impose any
external ecclesiastical ordinances, no
suggestions about the need for
showing themselves to be in the line
of the “historic continuity of the
church” by accepting circumcision or
otherwise. Whether we take the
reception of Cornelius, the welcome
accorded to the Samaritan converts, or
the joy of Barnabas when he perceived
that the grace of God was manifest in
sense, not by uniformity of organization,
but by the manifestation of the
fruits of the Spirit; that was the one
feature that was regarded as proof
that it was worthy of being received
into the common fellowship.
IV. To this visible society belongs
Authority. The very thought of a
Christian Church visible suggests the
idea of a separate community with a
distinct sphere of religious life; and
this in turn implies that the society
must have, like every form of
corporate social existence, powers of
oversight and discipline to be
exercised upon its members. But the authority
which the Church possesses is
altogether different from what a voluntary
association of men may exercise upon
its members, and of another kind from
what is possessed by lawful civil
government. The authority comes from
Christ Himself. The Christian
Democracy is also a Theocracy; it combines the
two ideas of rule associated with the
Greek and the Hebrew uses of the word
“ecclesia.” While the authority
belongs to the whole member-ship, and is
therefore democratic; it nevertheless
comes from above, and is therefore
theocratic. [56] It comes from Jesus
Christ, who is the Head of the Church.
[57]
Our Lord has intimated that He has
imparted this authority to His Church in
many recorded sayings, and in
particular in three well-known passages: in
Matt. xvi. 13-19; Matt. xviii. 15-20,
and in John xx. 21-23.
The first promise was made to St.
Peter in very special circumstances. Our
Lord had asked a question of all His
disciples. St. Peter, answering
impetuously in their name, made
himself their representative. His answer was
an adoring confession of his faith in
the Person of Christ [58] —a
confession which contained in germ all
the future confessions of the Church
of Christ, and which made him the
spokesman for the mighty multitude which
no man can number, who were to make
the same confession of adoring trust in
their Saviour. The confession was an
inspired one; it had been revealed to
St. Peter by the Father; there was
divinity in it, for God gave the
revelation which prompted the
confession ; and there was humanity in it, for
the man appropriated and made his own
what the Father had revealed to him.
It was the first of what was to become
a multitudinous sea of voices of men
inspired by the Father to know and to
confess that Jesus was the Christ, the
Son of the Living God. It was to the
Peter who answered as representing the
Twelve, to Peter who was the spokesman
for countless thousands of the
faithful who down through the march of
Time would make the same glad
confession, that the promise was
given.
The promise was of authority to bear
the key of the household of the
faithful, to have the power to let in
and keep out from the household. The
words and metaphor used were the
familiar Jewish terms to denote a delegated
authority. The thought conveyed is
commonly and correctly explained by a
reference to the substitution of
Shebna for Eliakim in the stewardship of
the House of David; [59] and it is
implied that our Lord, in the word He
used, made St. Peter, and those he
represented, stewards of the Household of
the faithful with the authority to
“bind” and to “loose,” to “prohibit” and
to “permit,” to “admit” and “exclude.”
Other passages in the New Testament,
making use of the same simile of the
major-domo with his key and his power
of letting in or locking out, assist
us to see the fuller meaning of the
promise recorded. The one is a warning
and the other an encouragement. Our
Lord called the attention of his
followers to the scribes and Pharisees, who
“sat in Moses’ seat,” and had to be
obeyed. They had the keys and they used
them to shut the door of the kingdom
of heaven against men. [60] Jesus
pronounces woe on them for using the
keys in this way. Their shutting out,
although they have the keys
officially, was evidently not ratified in
heaven. Hence we must infer that the
mere official position of being the
bearer of the “keys” does not always
ensure that what is done on earth by
the bearer will be ratified in heaven.
Then in the message to the Church in
“keys” is the Lord Himself. [61] It is
only when He lets in that there can
be no exclusion; it is only when He
shuts out that there is any real
exclusion. A real authority is
bestowed, and real powers are given; but just
as Peter’s confession depended on the
inspiration of the Father, so the
ratification of the exercise of power
depends on its Christ-like use.
It is doubtful whether the second
saying was addressed to the Twelve, or to
a larger group of disciples, but the
advice which precedes the promise is to
be applied and can only be applied to
all the followers of Jesus within a
community. It gives directions for
dealing with offences and offenders
within the Christian society, and has
been commonly regarded as the
Scriptural warrant for the exercise of
discipline within the Church. It
proceeds on the idea that offences may
arise from thoughtlessness as well as
from wilful sin, and that the
offender, in spite of his offence, is a
brother to be won back to
brotherliness. It prescribes a threefold attempt
to win back the erring brother to a state of
brotherly feeling. If
everything fails, if the offender has
refused to hear the offended person
pleading with him in his own person,
if he has rejected the remonstrances of
two or three fellow-Christians
pleading with him, if he finally spurns the
warnings of the Church or whole
Christian society, then, and not till then,
does the thought of punishment enter.
The punishment, if punishment it can
be called, is expulsion of a certain
kind from the Christian communion. The
offender is to be treated as the
Jewish Synagogue acted towards a Gentile or
a publican. He was to be looked on as
if he had never belonged to the
society, or as if he had voluntarily
excluded himself by the course of life
he had chosen to persist in.
We are told that the decisions of the
Church on earth in such cases as those
described will be ratified in Heaven.
This is a confirmation of the promise
given to St. Peter, and like it is
strictly conditional. The condition
attached is that there must be a real
and living communion between the
Church and its Head the Lord Jesus
Christ, so that the Church decides in a
Christ-like spirit. It is impossible
to separate the promise from the verses
which immediately follow. Our Lord
Himself joins them together by very
solemn words. This condition does not
render the promise of ratification
deceptive. The fellowship with Christ,
which is the condition, is to be had
provided it is sought for earnestly,
honestly and trustingly in prayer (v.
19).
The authority is given to the society
of believers, whether two or three
meeting together in a place far from
any others, or a great and organised
community. It is not entrusted by our
Lord directly to any official class;
it is not given to any human power not
rising out of the company of the
faithful. It is given to the visible
fellowship, and it belongs to them in
reality, as well as in name, in the
measure in which they have living
communion with Him Who is their
Head.
The third promise seems to have been
made to the nucleus of the infant
Church in
passage—to “the disciples and those
who were with them.” It is commonly held
to include all that is bestowed in the
other two, and perhaps something even
more solemn—the power to pronounce the
divine sentence of pardon involved in
the proclamation of the Gospel of
Christ. Whatever be the powers granted,
they are given to the whole company of
believers and not to any class among
them. They are also, as in the earlier
passages, given under conditions. The
power can only manifest itself in
those who are filled with the Spirit of
Christ. [62] In virtue of this promise
with its gift of power the visible
through the work of Christ, and can
assert that the divine conditions are
those which it proclaims. In virtue of
the same promise every individual
Christian is entitled to affirm with
absolute certainty to every penitent
sinner that God pardons his sins if he
accepts Jesus as his All-sufficient
Saviour. [63]
The authority was given in the first
passage to one man; in the second
probably to the Twelve; in the third
to the whole Christian community. In
each case the more particular is
absorbed in the more general. The power
given to St. Peter in the first
passage is merged in the authority given to
the Twelve in the second; and the
authority given to the Twelve is in turn
merged in the authority given to the
whole congregation. St. Peter received
the power because he represented the
Twelve directly, and the whole Church
founded on him and on his confession
indirectly. The Twelve received it
because they represented the Church
which was to come into existence through
their ministry. After the Resurrection
the whole infant Church received the
same, if not greater, authority. St.
Peter was to die; the Twelve also were
to go the way of all flesh; but the
society was to remain, and with it the
authority bestowed upon it by its
Lord.
It is needless to say that very
varying interpretations of these three
passages have been given by different
schools of theologians; that Romanists
found on the promise given to St.
Peter, and that some Anglicans insist that
the third promise was made to the
Eleven only, even if the company included
other disciples, and build up the
edifice of Apostolic Succession on this
narrow foundation; and that both
affirm that the authority which our Lord
gave to His Church was placed directly
in the hands of office-bearers, and
not in those of the whole
membership.
To examine at length the various
exegetical arguments brought forward in
support of these positions would lead
far beyond the space at our disposal;
but two general considerations may be
adduced. Such an interpretation seems
to be against the analogy of our
Lord’s teaching; and He was not so
understood by His New Testament
Church.
While our Lord chose Twelve to form an
inner circle of disciples, while He
trained them by close companionship
with Himself for special service, while
He weaned them in half-conscious ways
from their old life, it nowhere
appears that He bestowed upon them a
special rank or instituted a peculiar
or exceptional office of stewardship
of divine mysteries in their persons.
[64] It is improbable that He bestowed
on them the name apostles to be a
general and distinguishing title, and
one unshared in by other disciples
besides the Twelve. Our Lord called
them apostles when He sent them on a
special mission among the villages;
they were apostles while this mission
lasted; when it came to an end they
were the Twelve or inner circle of
intimates of the Master. [65] After
the Death and Resurrection of the Lord
the task to which they had been
trained by companion-ship with the Saviour
and in the apprentice mission among the
villages, became their life work,
but it was shared in from the very
beginning by others who bore with them
the common name apostle. [66] Nor does
our Lord make any promises to the
Twelve which imply that He had
bestowed upon them a special rank in the
Church which was to come. He told them
that whoever received them received
Him; but this was a privilege shared
in by the least of His followers, for
whoever received a little child in His
name received Him. [67] It is
impossible to avoid noticing how the
ancient manuals of church organization
have caught the spirit of Christ’s
teaching, that there are to be no
lordships in His Church. The
qualifications set forth for office are those
which every Christian ought to
possess; and the duties said to belong to
office are those which for the most
part all Christians ought to perform. We
do not see orders in the sense of
ecclesiastical rank whose authority does
not come from the people; we see
ecclesiastical order and arrangement of
service. Whatever power and authority
the
from the Lord resides in the
membership of the Church and not in any
superior rank of officials who have
received an authority over the Church
directly from Christ Himself.
The Church of the New Testament
evidently interpreted the words of our Lord
to mean that He placed the authority
which He had bestowed upon His Church
in the hands of the membership, of the
community which formed the local
church.
Even in the
was seldom lacking, the community was
self-governing, and acted on the
conviction that the authority bestowed
by Christ on His Church belonged to
the whole congregation of the faithful
and not to an apostolic hierarchy.
The assembly of the local church
appointed delegates and elected
office-bearers. The vice-apostle
Matthias and the Seven were, elected by the
assembly, [68] and a similar assembly
appointed Barnabas to be its delegate
to
before it, and passed judgment upon
their conduct. [70] The apostles might
suggest, but the congregation
ruled.
When we pass from the Church at
ministry of St. Paul, the proofs of
democratic self-government are still
more abundant. When the apostle urges
the duty of stricter discipline, or
when he recommends a merciful
treatment of one who had lapsed, he writes to
the whole community in whose hands the
authority resides. He pictures
himself in their midst while they are
engaged in this painful duty. He
assures them that they have the
authority of the Lord for the exercise of
discipline. For however thoroughly
democratic the government of the New
the Lord Himself was with them in the
exercise of the authority He had
entrusted to their charge. [71] The
evidence of the presence of Christ was
of the same kind as witnessed His
presence in the actions of public worship.
The local churches recognised His
presence in the manifestation of the
“gifts” of His Spirit bestowed upon
them. These “gifts” included not only
the bestowal of grace needed for
exhortation to edification, but also the
wisdom to “govern” and to “guide.” The
theocratic element was not given in a
hierarchy imposed upon the Church from
without; it manifested itself within
the community. It appeared in the
presence, recognition and use made of
gifts of government bestowed upon its
membership which were none the less
spiritual, divine and “from above,”
because they concerned the ordinary
duties of oversight and manifested themselves
in the natural endowments of
members of the community. The presence
of Christ among His people may be as
easily manifested in the decision
which the assembly of the local church
arrives at by a majority [72] of votes
as in the fiat launched from an
episcopal chair. The latter is not
necessarily from above, and the former is
not of necessity from beneath.
V. Lastly, the
The
is a favourite thought of
function of the
ancient
ancient
which include one central thought,
best expressed perhaps by the phrase, “To
approach God.” This central idea was
connected with the thoughts of special
times of approach, or Holy Seasons; with
a special place of approach, which
was the
approach on behalf of their fellows,
and who were called Priests. When we
turn to the
dependent ideas. The main function of
the New Testament Church is also to
approach God. Just as in the Old
Testament economy the priests when
approaching God presented sacrifices
to Him, so in the New Testament Church
gifts are to be presented to God, and
these gifts or offerings bear the Old
Testament name of sacrifices. We are
enjoined to present our bodies; [73]
our praise, “that is the fruit of our
lips which make confession to His
name”; [74] our faith; [75] our alms-giving;
[76] our “doing good and
communicating.” [77] These are all
called “sacrifices,” or “sacrifices
well-pleasing to God,” and, to
distinguish them from the offerings of the
Old Testament economy, “spiritual or
living sacrifices.” [78] The exertions
made by
called a sacrifice or offering. [79]
The New Testament Church is the ideal
limitations only have disappeared.
There is no trace in the New Testament
Church of any specially holy places or
times or persons. The Christian ideal
is, to quote the late Dr. Lightfoot, a
Holy Season extending all the year
round, a
Priesthood including every believer in
the Lord Jesus Christ. [80]
This does not mean that the New
Testament Church may not select special days
for the public worship of God; that it
may not dedicate buildings where the
faithful can meet together to unite in
offering the sacrifices of prayer and
praise; that it may not set apart men
from among its membership and appoint
them to lead its devotions. But it
does mean that God can be approached at
all times, and in every place, and by
every one among His people. His fellow
believers may select one from among
themselves to be their minister. There
may be a ministering priesthood, but
there cannot be a mediating priesthood
within the Christian society. There is
one Mediator only, and all, men,
women and children, have the promise
of immediate entrance into the presence
of God, and are priests.
Luther has expressed the thought of
the sacerdotal character of the Church
of Christ when he says, in a
description of the Eucharistic service: “There
our priest or minister stands before
the altar, having been publicly called
to his priestly function; he repeats
publicly and distinctly Christ’s words
of the Institution; he takes the Bread
and the Wine, and distributes it
according to Christ’s words; and we
all kneel beside him and around him, men
and women, young and old, master and
servant, mistress and maid, all holy
priests together, sanctified by the
blood of Christ. We are there in our
priestly dignity. . . . We do not let
the priest proclaim for himself the
ordinance of Christ; but he is the
mouthpiece of us all, and we all say it
with him in our hearts with true faith
in the Lamb of God Who feeds us with
His Body and Blood.”
This sacerdotal character of the whole
the primitive Christian Church down to
at least the middle of the third
century. Whatever evinced a
whole-hearted dedication of one’s self to God
was a sacrifice which required no
mediating priesthood in the offering. For
the Christian sacrifice always means a
sacrifice of self. When Polycarp gave
his body to be burnt for the faith of
Jesus, he gave it in sacrifice, and
every martyr’s death or suffering was
a sacrifice well-pleasing to God. [81]
When poor and humble believers fasted
that they might have food to give to
the hungry, they were sacrificing a
spiritual sacrifice. [82] When
Christians, either at home and in
private or in the assembly for public
worship, poured forth prayers and
thanksgivings, they were offering
sacrifice to God. [83] Justin Martyr
does not hesitate to call such
devotions “the only perfect and
well-pleasing sacrifices to God.” [84]
And the Holy Supper, the very apex and
crown of all Christian public
worship, where Christ gives Himself to
His people, and where His people
dedicate themselves to Him in body,
soul and spirit, was always a sacrifice
as prayers, praises and almagi ring
were. The
sacerdotal society, its members were
all priests, and its services were all
sacrifices. [85]
Such is the New Testament thought of
the
United Fellowship, a Visible
Fellowship, a Fellowship with an Authority
bestowed upon it by its Lord, and a
sacerdotal Fellowship whose every member
has the right of direct access to the
throne of God, bringing with him the
sacrifices of himself, of his praise
and of his confession.
_________________________________________________________________
[1] Matt. xvi. 18. Some modern critics
(cf. Schmiedel in the Encyc. Bibl.,
p. 3105) declare that this passage
could not have come from the lips of our
Lord in the form in which it has been
recorded, and in particular that He
could not have used the word
“ecclesia”; the main reason given being that
our Lord sought to reform hearts and
not external conditions. To argue from
that statement, however true it may
be, that Jesus had no intention of
founding a religious community and
could not have used the word “church,”
seems to me to be purely subjective
and therefore untrustworthy reasoning.
Besides, the use of the word by
found the word existing within
Christian circles when he embraced the new
faith; and to find it in common use at
so early a period entitles us, in my
judgment, to trace it back to Jesus
Himself. The trend of modern criticism
has been to place
it was formerly held to be.
eucharistic formula (Mk. xiv. 22-24,
Matt. xxvi. 26-28) came from Jesus; he
takes it for granted that every one
who becomes a Christian (himself
included) must be baptized. We have
thus, quite independently of the Gospels
or of the Acts, “church,” “baptism,”
“the eucharist”—all implying a
religious community, all in common use
at a time scarcely two years after
the death of our Lord, That entitles
us to attribute them to Jesus Himself.
[2] Compare Josephus, Antiq. XV. x. 3;
Bell. Jud. I, xxi. 3. See also
Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen
Volkes (1898, 3rd ed.), ii. 158 f.; G. A.
Smith, Historical Geography of Palestine,
p. 473 ff.; Wissowa, Religion and
Kultus der Römer (1902), p. 284, n.
3.
[3] Numbers x. 2, 3. In the Old
Testament two words are used to denote the
assembling of Israel, qāhāl
and ’edāh; the former is translated “assembly”
and the latter “congregation” in the
Revised Version. In the Septuagint
ekklēsia is almost always always
used to translate qāhāl, and sunagōgē to
translate ’edāh. Both Greek words
appear continually in the later
Hellenistic Judaism, and it is
difficult to distinguish their meanings; but
Schürer is inclined to think that
sunagōgē means the assembly of Israel as a
matter of fact; while ekklēsia
has always an ideal reference attached to it.
Compare Schürer, Geschichte des
Jüdischen Volkes (3rd ed. 1898), ii. 432, n.
10; Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, pp.
5-7.
[4] This is the common use of the word
in classical Greek; in the later
Greek the word denotes any popular
assembly, even a disorderly one; it is
this use that is found in Acts xix.
41. Dio Cassius uses the word to denote
the Roman comitia or ruling popular
assembly of the sovereign Roman people.
The ruling idea in the word, whether
in classical or in Hellenistic Greek,
is that it denotes an assembly of the
people, not of a committee or council.
Against this view compare Hatch, The
Organization of the Early Christian
Churches (1881), p. 30, n. 11; and for
a criticism of Hatch, see Sohm,
Kirchenrecht (1892), i. 17, n.
4.
[5] Acts xv. 16; cf. Amos ix.
11.
[6] Gal. vi. 16; Acts xx. 28; cf. Ps.
lxxiv. 2.
[7] Weizsäcker, Jahrbücher für
deutsche Theologie, xviii, 481.
[8] The rock on which the Church is
founded is “a human character
acknowledging our Lord’s divine
Sonship.” Gore, The Church and the Ministry,
3rd ed. p. 38. “In virtue of this
personal faith vivifying their
discipleship, the Apostles became
themselves the first little Ecclesia,
constituting a living rock upon which
a far larger and ever enlarging
Ecclesia should very shortly be built
slowly up, living stone by living
stone, as each new faithful convert
was added to the society.” Hort, The
Christian Ecclesia, p. 17.
[9] Matt xvi. 22, 23. The suggestion
of the Evil One to Peter, and presented
to our Lord by Peter—the possibility of
Messiahship without suffering—met
the Saviour at the great moments of
His earthly ministry; at the beginning,
in the Temptation scene; here, when he
had the vision and gave the promise
of the Church; at the end, in the
Garden of Gethsemane. There are
indications in the Gospels that it was
the temptation never absent from his
mind. In the form in which it presents
itself to His followers—the
possibility of saving fellowship with
Jesus apart from trust on a suffering
Saviour—it has perhaps also been the
crowning temptation of His Church and
followers. If our Lord alluded to this
special temptation when He said to
St. Peter, near the end, “Simon,
Simon, behold Satan asked to have you that
he might sift you as wheat,” as is
most likely from His references to His
own temptations and to St. Peter’s
relation to his brethren, there is a
delicate suggestion of fellowship
softening rebuke and vivifying the
promise; Luke xxii. 31.
[10] 1 Cor. i. 2.
[11] Phil. i. 1; Eph. i. 1; Col. i. 2;
Rom. i. 7.
[12] 1 Cor. xii.; Eph. iv. 4-13; Rom.
xii. 3-16. It is important to notice
that St. Paul, in Rom. xii. 7, makes
diakonia a “gift” which manifests the
presence of Christ, and that this word
is used to mean any kind of
“ministry” within the Church. See below p. 62.
[13] See p. 63 n.
[14] For St. Paul’s statement about
the “gifts’: compare Hort, The Christian
Ecclesia, pp. 153-70; Heinrici, Das
Erste Sendschreiben des Apostel Paulus
an die Korinther (1880), pp. 347-463;
Kühl, Die Gemeindeordnung in den
Pastoralbriefen (1885), pp.
42-49.
[15] Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age
(English translation), I. p. 44 ff.
[16] It ought to be noted, however,
that although we do not find the word
“ecclesia” in 1 Peter, we do find the
thought of the unity of all believers
strongly expressed in a variety of
ways: “Ye are an elect race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for God’s own possession” (1 Peter ii.
9); and in v. 17 we have the word “brotherhood”
used to bring out the same
idea: This word in the early centuries
was technically used as synonymous
with ecclesia. See below p. 21. The
double meaning of ecclesia is found in
Matt. xvi. 18 compared with Matt.
xviii. 17. In the Apocalypse the unity is
expressed in the phrase “the Bride,
the Lamb’s wife,” and the plurality in
the “Seven Churches” (Rev. xxi. 9; ii.
1, etc).
[17] The various passages in which the
word “ecclesia” occurs in the sense
of the Christian society have often
been collected and grouped. The
following classification is based on
that of Dr. Hort. i. The word
“ecclesia,” in the singular and with
the article, is used to denote:— 1. The
original Church of Jerusalem and
Judea, when there was no other; Acts v. 11;
viii. 1, 3; Gal. i. 13; 1 Cor. xv. 9;
Phil. iii. 6. 2. The sum total of the
churches in Judea, Samaria and
Galilee; Acts ix. 31. 3. The local
church:—Jerusalem, Acts xi. 22; xii.
1, 5; xv. 4. Thessalonica, 1 Thess. i.
1; 2 Thess. i. 1. Corinth, 1 Cor. i.
2; vi. 4; xiv. 12, 23; 2 Cor. i. 1;
Rom. xvi. 23. Cenchrea, Rom. xvi. 1.
Laodicea, Col. iv. 16. Antioch, Acts
xiii. 1; xv. 2. Each of the Seven
Churches of Asia, Rev. ii. iii. Ephesus,
Acts xi. 26; xiv. 27; xx. 17; 1 Tim.
v. 16. Caesarea, Acts xviii. 22. Also
in Jas. v. 14; 3 John 9, 10. 4. The
assembly of a local church:—Acts xv. 22;
1 Cor. xiv. 23. 5. The House
Church:—at Ephesus, 1 Cor. xvi. 19; at Rome,
xvi. 5; at Colossae, Col. iv. 15;
Philem. 2. ii. The word “ecclesia,” in the
singular and without the article, is
used to denote:— 1. Every local church
within a definite district:—Acts xiv.
23. 2. Any or every local Church:—1
Cor. xiv. 4; iv. 17; Phil. iv. 15; and
probably 1 Tim. iii. 5, 15. 3. The
assembly of the local church:—1 Cor.
xiv. 19, 35; xi. 18; 3 John 6. iii. The
word “ecclesia” in the plural is used
to denote:— 1. The sum of the local
churches within a definite district.
the name being given or implied:—Judea,
1 Thess. ii. 14; Gal. i. 22. Galatia,
1 Cor. xvi. 1; Gal. i. 2. Syria and
Cilicia, Acts xv. 41. Derbe and
Lystra, Acts xvi. 5. Macedonia, 2 Cor. viii.
1, 19. Asia, 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Rev. i.
4, 11, 20; ii. 7, 11, 17, 29; iii. 6,
13, 22; xxii. 16. 2. An indefinite
number of local churches:—2 Cor. xi. 8,
28; viii. 23, 24; Rom. xvi. 4, 16. 3.
The sum total of all the local
churches:—2 Thess. i. 4; 1 Cor. vii.
17; xi. 16; xiv. 33; 2 Cor. xii. 13. 4.
The assemblies of all the local
churches:—1 Cor. xiv. 34. iv. The word
“ecclesia” is used in the singular to
denote:— 1. The one universal Church
as represented in the individual local
Church:—l Cor. x. 32; xi. 22; (and
probably) xii. 28; Acts xx. 28; (and
perhaps) 1 Tim. iii. 5, 15. 2. The one
universal Church absolutely:—Col. i.
18, 24; Eph. i. 22; iii. 10, 21; v. 23,
24, 25, 27, 29, 32. Compare also
Bannerman, The Scripture Doctrine of the
Church, p. 571 ff.; Hort, The
Christian Ecclesia, pp. 116-118.
[18] 1 Thess. ii. 14; cf. i. 1.
[19] 1 Cor. i. 12, 13; vi. 9.
[20] 1 Cor. iv. 17; vii. 17; xi. 2,
23; xvi. l.
[21] Gal. iii. 28.
[22] Rom. xi. 17.
[23] Professor Ramsay traces a growth
of definiteness in St. Paul’s use of
the word “Church” from its application
to a single congregation to its use
to denote what he calls the “Unified
Church,” and ingeniously connects the
use in each case with political
parallels. Thus the phrase “the Church of
the Thessalonians” corresponds in
civil usage to the ecclesia of the Greek
city-state, while the phrase “the
Church in Corinth,” suggesting as it does,
“the Church” in other places as well
as in Corinth, corresponds in civil
usage to a universal and all-embracing
political organization like the Roman
Empire. Ramsay, St. Paul the
Traveller, pp. 124-7. Whether this be true or
not, few will fail to find a connexion
between the wide meaning the apostle
puts into the word “Church” in the
Epistles to the Ephesians and to the
Colossians, and the imperial
associations of the city from which he wrote.
“Writing now from Rome, he (St. Paul)
could not have divested himself, if he
would, of a sense of writing from the
centre of all earthly human affairs;
all the more since we know from the
narrative in Acts xxii. that he himself
was a Roman citizen, and apparently
proud to hold this place in the Empire.
Here then he must have been vividly
reminded of the already existing unity
which comprehended both Jew and
Gentile under the bond of subjection to the
emperor at Rome, and similarity and
contrast would alike suggest that a
truer unity bound together in one
society all believers in the crucified
Lord.” Hort, The Christian Ecclesia,
p. 143.
[24] “Not in abstraction or isolation,
but in communion lies the very
meaning of personality itself,”
Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 5.
“Fellowship is to the higher life what
food is to the natural life—without
it every power flags and at last
perishes,” Hort, Hulsean Lectures, p. 194.
[25] Eph. iv. 4-6.
[26] This thought has been beautifully
expressed by Dr. Sanday, The
Conception of Priesthood (1898), pp.
11-14.
[27] To the Smyrnaeans, 8.
[28] Exegetes differ about the exact
translation of 1 Cor. xii. 27: humeis
de este sōma Christou A few (such
as Godet) translate it: “a body of
Christ”; by far the largest number
translate: “the Body of Christ”; many
“Christ’s Body,” leaving the exact
thought indeterminate. It seems to me
that the exact rendering, a or the,
cannot be reached from purely
grammatical reasoning. St. Paul is
completing his metaphor or interpreting
his parable, He has been emphasizing
the fact that the Christian community
at Corinth is an organism with a
variety of parts differing in structure and
function. It is a perfect organism in
the sense that there is no necessary
part lacking that is required for the
purpose the organism is intended, to
serve for its support or increase or
for work. The life which pervades the
organism in its totality and in every
minutest part is Christ (Col. iii.
14). The organism is the Body of
Christ.
[29] “Este potius . . . Christianus,
pecuniam tuam adsidente Christo
spectantibus angelis et martyris
praesentibus super mensam dominicam
sparge.” De Aleatoribus, 11; Harnack
and v. Gebhardt, Texte u.
Untersuchungen, V. i. 29.
[30] Origen, De Or. 31:—“Kai
angelikōn dunameōn ephistamenōn tois
athroismasi tōn pisteuontōn
kai autou tou kuriou kai sōtēros hēmōn dunameōs
ēdē de kai pneumatōn
hagiōn, oimai de, hoti kai prokekoimēmenōn; saphes de,
hoti kai en tō biō
periontōn, ei kai to pōs ouk eucheres eipein.”
[31] Tertullian, De exhortatione
castitatis, 7; compare De poenitentia, 10;
De pudicitia, 21; De fuga in
persecutione, 14.
[32] Rom. vi. 3-8.; Gal. iii.
27.
[33] 2 Cor. xi. 23-27.
[34] Compare Dobschütz, Die
Urchristlichen Gemeinden, Sittensgeschichtliche
Bilder (1902), pp. 18 ff.
[35] Compare Robertson, Regnum Dei, p.
54:—“It (the kingdom of Christ) is
the Kingdom of God in its idea—in
potency and in promise: but visibly and
openly not yet. This is St. Paul’s
well-known paradox of the Christian life.
Our whole task as Christians is to
become what we are.”
[36] As in 1 Cor. x. 32; xi. 22; and
xii. 28; compare above p. 11, note 2,
§ iv. 1.
[37] The principle which underlies the
claim generally associated with the
ambiguous phrase “apostolic
succession” is so curiously like the demand made
by “those of the sect of the Pharisees
who believed” in the, days of St.
Paul, that it can be most naturally
expressed in the same language if only a
“succession of bishops” takes the
place of “circumcision.”
[38] Gen. xvii. 13.
[39] Gal. ii. 9: “And when they
perceived the grace that was given unto me,
James and Cephas and John, they who
were reputed to be pillars, gave to me
and Barnabas the right hands of
fellowship, that we should go unto the
Gentiles, and they unto the
circumcision.”
[40] See Sources of the Apostolic
Canons, where ekklēsia appears in § 1 and
adolphotēs in § 2; Texte u.
Untersuchungen, II. v. 7. 12.
[41] For universa fraternitas, see the
tract De Aleatoribus, 1; Texte u.
Untersuchungen, V. i. 11; omnis
fraternitas, V. i. 14; compare Tertullian,
Apologia, 39; De praescriptione, 20;
De pudicitia, 13. For pasa hē
adolphotēs, see 1 Clem. ii. 4;
and Harnack’s note on the passage; also 1
Peter ii. 17.
[42] Acts xi. 30; cf. xii. 25.
[43] Col. iv. 16; where St. Paul asks
that his letter be read to the Church
of Laodicea.
[44] 1 Thess. iv. 9-11.
[45] Rom. xvi. 16; 1 Cor. xvi.
19.
[46] Rom. xvi. 21-23; 1 Cor. xvi. 19;
Gal. i. 2; Phil. iv. 21, 22; Col. i.
1, 2.
[47] 2 Cor. i. 1.
[48] 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Acts xix.
10.
[49] Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller,
p. 274.
[50] 1 Thess. iv. 1O.
[51] 1 Cor. xvi. 1.
[52] 1 Cor. x. 32; xii. 13; Rom. iii.
29.
[53] Rendall, The Pauline Collection
for the Saints, Expositor, Nov; 1893.
For St. Paul’s conception of what was
meant by “fellowship” and the methods
he took to make it visible, see
Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age of the
Christian Church (Eng. Trans.) I. p.
46 ff.; II, pp. 307-9; and Ramsay, St.
Paul the Traveller, pp. 54, 130
ff.
[54] Acts viii. 14-27.
[55] Acts xi. 22, 23.
[56] Some Anglican divines make
strange deductions from the truth that the
authority which belongs to the Church
comes from above. They at once infer
that inasmuch as the authority comes
from above it cannot come directly to
the whole Christian society; but must come
through an official class of
ministers who act as a species of
plastic medium between our Lord and His
people. Strange how Gnostic and Arian
ideas banished from the creeds of the
Church linger in thoughts about
Orders! Then by a confusion of ideas they
transfer the phrase “from above” to
the human sphere, and make it an
essential idea of legitimate
ecclesiastical rule that it must be invariably
communicated from a higher to a lower
order of ministry! Why should
authority imparted through the
Christian Society be regarded as “from
beneath,” as of the earth
earthy?
[57] Ephes. v. 23; Col. i. 18.
[58] “There is a tone of loving
reverence and worship in the words ‘Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the Living
God.’ They answer to our Lord’s picture of
the spiritual experience of His
disciples in His great intercessory prayer;
‘I manifested Thy name unto the men
whom Thou gavest Me out of the world;
Thine they were, and Thou gavest them
to Me; and they have kept Thy word.
Now they know that all things,
whatsoever Thou hast given Me, are from Thee;
for the words which Thou gavest Me, I
have given unto them; and they
received them, and knew of a truth
that I came forth from Thee, and they
believed that Thou didst send Me.”
Bannerman, The Scripture Doctrine of the
Church, p. 169.
[59] Isaiah xiii. 20, 22. Compare
Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 223.
[60] Matt. xxiii. 2, 3, 13:—hoti
kleiete tēn basileian tōn ouranōn
emprosthen tōn
aithrōpōn.
[61] Rev. iii. 7:—tade legei ho
hagios, ho alēthinos, ho echōn tēn klein
Dabid, ho anoigōn kai oudeis
kleisei, kai kleiōn kai oudeis anoigei.
[62] John xx. 22, 23:—kai toûto ei̓pṑn
e̓nephúsēsen kaì
légei au̓tois,
Lábete Pneuma Hagion an
tinōn a̓phēte tàs
a̔martías, a̓phientai
(apheōntai Ti., W. H.)
autois, án tinōn kratēte kekrátēntai.
[63] “The main thought which the words
convey is that of the reality of the
power of absolution from sin granted
to the Church and not of the particular
organization through which the power
is administered. There is nothing in
the context to show that the gift was
confined to any particular group (as
the apostles) among the whole company
present. The commission must therefore
be regarded as properly the commission
of the Christian society, and not as
that of the Christian ministry (cf.
Matt. v. 13, 14). The great mystery of
the world, absolutely insoluble by
thought, is that of sin; the mission of
Christ was to bring salvation from
sin; and the work of the Church is to
apply to all that which He has gained.
Christ risen was Himself the sign of
the completed overthrow of death, the
end of sin, and the impartment of His
life necessarily carried with it the
fruit of His conquest. Thus the promise
is in one sense an interpretation of
the gift. The gift of the Holy Spirit
finds its application in the
communication or withholding of the powers of
the new life. . . . The promise, as
being made not to one but to the
Society, carries with it of necessity
. . . the character of perpetuity: the
society never dies. . . . The exercise
of the power must be placed in the
closest connexion with the faculty of
spiritual discernment, consequent on
the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Westcott, Gospel of St. John, p. 295.
[64] Cf. 1 Peter iv. 10: “According as
each hath received a gift,
ministering it among yourselves, as
good stewards of the manifold grace of
God.”
[65] The relations of the Twelve to
the Church of Christ are strikingly
brought out by Dr. Hort in his
Christian Ecclesia, pp. 23-41. On the title
apostle he says: “Taking these facts
together respecting the usage of the
Gospels, we are led, I think, to the
conclusion that in its original sense
the term Apostle was not intended to
describe the habitual relation of the
Twelve to our Lord during the days of
His ministry, but strictly speaking
only that mission among the villages,
of which the beginning and the end are
recorded for us.” . . . “If they (the
Twelve) represented an apostolic order
within the Ecclesia then the Holy
Communion must have been intended only for
members of that order, and the rest of
the Ecclesia had no part in it. But
if, as the men of the apostolic age
and subsequent ages believed without
hesitation, the Holy Communion was
meant for the Ecclesia at large, then the
Twelve sat down that evening as
representatives of the Ecclesia at large;
they were disciples more than they
were apostles.”
[66] St. Paul in his account of the
appearances of our Lord after His
Resurrection distinguishes between the
Twelve and apostles; 1 Cor. xv. 5-8;
cf. below, pp. 74-85.
[67] Matt. x. 40; cf. Luke x. 16;
Matt. xviii. 5; Mark ix. 37; Luke ix. 48.
[68] Acts i. 23; vi. 5.
[69] Acts xi. 22.
[70] On the conduct of St. Peter at
Caesarea, Acts xi. 1-4; on the opinions
and practices of St. Paul, xv. 12,
22-29, and whatever differences may be
found in the account of the
proceedings in this chapter and in St. Paul’s
statement in the Epistle to the
Galatians (Gal. ii. 1 ff.) there is no
question that both recognize the
supremacy of the assembly of the Church.
[71] 1 Cor. v. 3-5; Gal. vi. 1.
[72] The censure inflicted on the
member of the Corinthian Church who had
disobeyed the Apostle Paul was carried
by a majority: 2 Cor. ii. 6. hē
epitimia au̔́tē hē
hupo tōn pleionōn.
[73] Rom. xii. 1: “I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, which
is your reasonable service (tēn
logikēn latreian humōn).” The thought
expressed is that the Christian should
consecrate the whole personality,
body, soul and spirit to God; and thus
all service whether of work or
worship became a sacrifice. Compare
Ps. li. 15-17.
[74] Heb. xiii. 15.
[75] Phil. ii. 17.
[76] Paul’s great collection for the
poor saints in Jerusalem is an
offering: Acts xxiv. 17; so is the
contributions which the members of the
Church at Philippi sent to the
apostle: Phil. iv. 18.
[77] Heb. xiii. 16.
[78] Thusiai pneumatikai: 1 Pet. ii.
5; thusia zōsa: Rom. xii. 1; cf. Phil.
ii. 17.
[79] Rom. xv. 16.
[80] Commentary on the Epistle to the
Philippians (1881), 6th ed. p. 183.
[81] Compare Letter of the Smyrnaeans
on the Martyrdom of Polycarp, 14:
“Then he, placing his arms behind him
and being hound to the stake, like a
goodly ram out of a great flock for an
offering, a burnt sacrifice made
ready and acceptable to God, looking
up to heaven, said: O Lord God
Almighty. . . .”
[82] Aristides, Apology, 15: “And if
any among the Christians is poor and in
want, and they have not overmuch of the
means of life, they fast two or
three days, in order that they may
provide those in need with the food they
require.” A favourite phrase to
describe widows and orphans was “the altar
of God” on which the sacrifices of
almsgiving were offered up. It is used by
Polycarp, To the Philippians, 4; also
in the Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 26
and iv. 3, of the orphans, the old and
all who were supported by the
benevolence of the faithful.
Tertullian says of the widow: “aram enim Dei
mundam proponi oportet,” Ad Uxor. i.
7.
[83] Clement of Alexandria
spiritualizes the Old Testament sacrifices to
make them the forerunners of Christian
prayers. “And that compounded incense
which is mentioned in the Law, is that
which consists of many tongues and
voices in prayer . . . brought
together in praises with a pure mind, and
just and right conduct, from holy
works and righteous prayer,” Strom. vii.
6. In the same chapter he says: “For
the sacrifice of the Church is the word
breathing as incense from holy souls,
the sacrifice and the whole mind being
at the same time unveiled to
God.”
[84] Dialogue, 117.
[85] The conception of a mutilated
sacerdotalism, where one part of the
Christian worship is alone thought of
as the true sacrifice, and a small
portion of the fellowship—the
ministry—is declared to be the priesthood, did
not appear until the time of Cyprian,
and was his invention.
_________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER II
A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN APOSTOLIC
TIMES
Can we, piercing the mists of two
thousand years, see a Christian Church as
it was in Apostolic times—a tiny
island in a sea of surrounding heathenism?
Our vision gets most assistance from
the Epistles of St. Paul, which not
only are the oldest records of the
literature of the New Testament, but give
us much clearer pictures of the
earliest Christian assemblies for
edification and thanksgiving than are
to be found in the Acts of the
Apostles. The more we study these
epistles the more clearly we discern that
we must not project into these
primitive times a picture taken from any of
the long organized churches of our
days. On the other hand, we can see many
an analogy in the usages of the growing
churches of the mission field. This
is not to be wondered at. The
primitive church and churches growing among
heathen surroundings have both to do
with the origins of organization.
For one thing, we must remember that
the meetings of the congregation were
held in private houses; [86] and as
the number of believers grew, more than
one house must have been placed at the
service of the brethren for their
meetings for public worship and for
the transaction of the necessary
business of the congregation. We are
told that in the primitive church at
Jerusalem the Lord’s Supper was
dispensed in the houses, [87] and that the
brethren met in the house of Mary the
mother of John Mark, [88] in the house
of James the brother of our Lord, [89]
and probably elsewhere. At the close
of the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul
sends greetings to three, perhaps
five, groups of brethren gathered
round clusters of distinguished Christians
whom he names. One of these groups he
calls a “church,” and the others were
presumably so also. [90] The account
of Saul, the persecutor, making havoc
of the Church, entering every house
and haling men and women to prison,
reads like a record of the persecution
of the Huguenots among the
house-churches of Reformation times in
France, or like raids on
house-conventicles in the Covenanting
times in Scotland. It becomes evident
too as we study these early records
that when it was possible, that is, when
any member had a sufficiently large
abode and was willing to open his house
to the brethren, comparatively large
assemblies, including all the
Christians of the town or
neighbourhood, met together at stated times and
especially on the Lord’s Day, for the
service of thanksgiving. Gaius was
able to accommodate all his fellow
Christians, and was the “host of the
whole Church.” [91]
Traces of these earliest
house-churches survived in happier days. The ground
plan of the earliest Roman church,
discovered in 1900 in the Forum at Rome,
is modelled not on the basilica or
public hall, but on the audience hall of
the wealthy Roman burgher, and the
recollections of the familiar
surroundings at the meetings in the
house-churches probably guided the
pencil of the architect who first
planned the earliest public buildings
dedicated to Christian worship. [92]
Old liturgies which enjoin the deacon,
at the period of the service when the
Lord’s Supper is about to be
celebrated, to command the mothers to
take their babies on their knees,
bring [93] with them memories of these
homely gatherings in private houses,
which lasted down to the close of the
second century and probably much
later, except in the larger towns.
[94]
It is St. Paul, in his First Epistle
to the Corinthians, who gives us the
most distinct picture of the meetings
of the earliest Christian communities.
The brethren appear to have had three
distinct meetings—one for the purposes
of edification by prayer and
exhortation, another for thanksgiving which
began with a common meal and ended
with the Holy Supper, [95] and a third
for the business of the little
society.
1. In his description of the first the
apostle introduces us to an earnest
company of men and women full of
restrained enthusiasm, which might soon
become unrestrained. We hear of no
officials appointed to conduct the
services. The brethren fill the body
of the hall, the women sitting
together, in all probability on the
one side, and the men on the other;
behind them are the inquirers; and
behind them, clustering round the door,
unbelievers, whom curiosity or some
other motive has attracted, and who are
welcomed to this meeting “for the
Word.”
The service, and probably each part of
the service, began with the
benediction: “Grace be to you and
peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ,” which was followed by
an invocation of Jesus and the
confession that He is Lord. [96] One
of the brethren began to pray; then
another and another; one began the
Lord’s Prayer, [97] and all joined; each
prayer was followed by a hearty and
fervent “Amen.” [98] Then a hymn was
sung; then another and another, for
several of the brethren have composed or
selected hymns at home which they wish
to be sung by the congregation. [99]
Several of these hymns are preserved
in the New Testament, and one is
embodied in one of our Scotch
paraphrases: [100] —
To Him be power divine ascribed,
And endless blessings paid;
Salvation, glory, joy, remain
For ever on His Head:
Thou hast redeemed us with Thy
Blood,
And set the prisoners free;
Thou mad’st us kings and priests to
God,
And we shall reign with Thee,
*
* * *
*
To Him that sits upon the throne
The God whom we adore,
And to the Lamb that once was
slain;
Be glory evermore. [101]
After the hymns came reading from the
Old Testament Scriptures, and readings
or recitations concerning the life and
death, the sayings and deeds of
Jesus. [102] Then came the
“instruction”—sober words for edification, based
on what had been read, and coming
either from the gift of “wisdom,” or from
that intuitive power of seeing into
the heart of spiritual things which the
apostle calls “knowledge.” [103] Then
came the moment of greatest
expectancy. It was the time for the
prophets, men who believed themselves
and were believed by their brethren to
be specially taught by the Holy
Spirit, to take part. They started
forward, the gifted men, so eager to
impart what had been given them, that
sometimes two or more rose at once and
spoke together; [104] and sometimes
when one was speaking the message came
to another, and he leapt to his feet,
[105] increasing the emotion and
taking from the edification. When the
prophets were silent, first one, then
another, and sometimes two at once,
began strange ejaculatory prayers, [106]
in sentences so rugged and disjointed
that the audience for the most part
could not understand, and had to wait
till some of their number, who could
follow the strange utterances, were
ready to translate them into
intelligible language. [107] Then
followed the benediction: “The Grace of
the Lord Jesus be with you all”; the
“kiss of peace”; and the congregation
dispersed. Sometimes during the
meeting, at some part of the services, but
oftenest when the prophets were
speaking, there was a stir at the back of
the room, and a heathen, who had been
listening in careless curiosity or in
barely concealed scorn, suddenly felt
the sinful secrets of his own heart
revealed to him, and pushing forward
fell down at the feet of the speaker
and made his confession, [108] while
the assembly raised the doxology:
“Blessed be God, the Father of the Lord
Jesus, for evermore. [109] Amen.”
Such was a Christian meeting for
public worship in Corinth in apostolic
times; and foreign as it may seem to
us, the like can be still seen in
mission fields among the hot-blooded
people of the East. I have witnessed
everything but the speaking “with
tongues” in meetings of native Christians
in the Deccan in India, when European
influence was not present to restrain
Eastern enthusiasm and condense it in
Western moulds.
The meeting described by the apostle
is not to be taken as something which
might be seen in Corinth but was
peculiar to that city; it may be taken as a
type of the Christian meeting
throughout the Gentile Christian Churches; for
the Apostle, in his suggestions and
criticisms, continually speaks of what
took place throughout all the
churches. [110]
It is to be observed that if the
apostle finds fault with some things, he
gives the order of the service and
expressly approves of every part of it,
even of the strange ejaculatory
prayers. [111] He gives his Corinthian
converts one broad principle, which he
expects them to apply for themselves
in order to better their service.
Everything is to be done for the
edification of the brethren, and the
first qualification for edification is
that all things be done “decently and
in order,” for God is not a God of
confusion but of peace. [112] He gives
examples of his principle. The
prophets were to restrain themselves;
they were to speak one at a time, and
not more than two or three at one
meeting; [113] and those who prayed “in
tongues” were to keep silence
altogether unless some one who could interpret
was present, for it is better to speak
five words with understanding than
ten thousand in a tongue. The women
too who had the gift of prophecy were to
use it in private, and not start
forward at the public meeting and deliver
their message there. So far from
finding fault with the kind of meeting
described, St. Paul seems to look on
the manifestation of these gifts of
praise, prayer, teaching, and
prophecy, within the congregation at Corinth,
as an evidence that the Christian
community there was completely furnished
within its own membership with all the
gifts needed for the building up in
faith and works. [114]
What cannot fail to strike us in this
picture is the untrammelled liberty of
the worship, the possibility of every
male member of the congregation taking
part in the prayers and the
exhortations, and the consequent responsibility
laid on the whole community to see
that the service was for the edification
of all. When we consider the rebukes
that the apostle considered it
necessary to administer, it is also
somewhat surprising to find so few
injunctions which take the form of
definite rules for public worship, and to
observe the confidence which the
apostle had that if certain broad
principles were laid down and
observed, the community was of itself able to
conduct all things with that attention
to decency and order which ensured
edification.
Our wonder is apt to be increased when
we remember the social surroundings
and conditions of these Corinthian
Christians. They were a number of
burghers, freedmen and slaves, who, as
their names show, were mostly of
Roman origin, gathered from the
wealthiest and most profligate city on the
Mediterranean. The population of
Corinth was as mixed as that of Alexandria.
At Cenchrea, on the eastern shore of
the isthmus, the wealth of Asia and
Egypt poured in, and was sent off to Rome and Italy from Lechaeum,
the
western harbour. The flow of commerce
brought with it the peoples, religions
and habits of all lands. The religion
of the city was a strange medley of
cults Eastern and Western. Aphrodite
and Astarte, Isis and Cybele, were
among her deities; Romans, Jews,
Egyptians and Phoenicians among her people.
The familiar illustrations which the
apostle uses in his epistles indicate
the habits of the population. He
speaks of the arena and the wild-beast
fights, [115] of the theatre, [116] of
the boxing match and the stadium
race, [117] of the great idol-feasts
and processions. [118] The city, we
know, was honeycombed with
“gilds”—religious corporations for the practices
of the Eastern religions, and trades
unions for the artizans and the seamen.
The Christian society was gathered
from all classes; from the poor and the
slaves, [119] from the well-to-do like
the city treasurer, [120] and an
elder from the Jewish Synagogue; [121]
it included ladies of rank like
Chloe, [122] and men of abounding
wealth like Gains. [123] It was this
hcterogenous society, including so
many jarring elements, that the apostle
expected to develop into an orderly
Church of Christ in virtue of the “
gifts “ of the Spirit implanted within
it.
2. It is by no means so easy to get a
clear picture of the second meeting of
the Christian community—the meeting
for thanksgiving—as it is to see what
the meeting for edification was like.
[124] With the latter we have only to
remove the blemishes which the apostle
found, and the vision of the meeting
as he approved of it stands clearly
before us. But the abuses which had
corrupted the meeting for thanksgiving
had so changed it, from what it ought
to have been, that it could not serve
what it was meant to do. The framework
of the degenerate meeting and of the
same gathering re-organized according
to the apostle’s directions can easily
be traced. The members of the
Christian community in Corinth
assembled together in one place, where they
ate together a meal which they
themselves provided; and this meeting ended
with the celebration of the Lord’s
Supper. The Holy Supper was the essential
part. The common meal and what
belonged to it were accessories, the casket
to contain the one precious jewel, the
body to be vivified by this soul. It
was the Holy Supper that really
brought them together; but their conduct had
made it impossible for them to be the
Lord’s guests at His Table. [125] The
apostle tells the Corinthians that
their meeting could not be a Lord’s
Supper nor even a love-feast if each
ate his own meal and one was hungry,
while another drank his fill. [126]
The common meal showed that all the
brethren belonged to one living
organism which was the Church in Corinth, of
which the Lord was the Head. Nothing
could so wound this thought as making
the distinctions between rich and
poor, which had been done. It banished the
whole idea of fellow-ship, and
sensuality was introduced where, above all
places, it ought to have been absent.
[127] God had manifested His
displeasure by sending sickness and
death into the congregation. [128] The
apostle lays down a general principle,
and gives instances of its
application, which if followed out
will make the common meal a fitting
introduction to the Holy Supper, and
then shows how the Lord’s Supper itself
is to be solemnly and fitly celebrated
according to the commands of Jesus.
If we take the principles which the
apostle lays down and suggestions from
other portions of the New Testament,
with those which come from the earliest
post-apostolic descriptions of similar
meetings, we may perhaps venture to
reconstruct the scene.
The apostle shows that this meeting
for thanksgiving is to be a social meal
representing the fellowship which
subsists between all the members of the
brotherhood, because they have each a
personal fellowship with their Lord.
They are therefore to eat all
together, and if anyone is too hungry to wait
for his neighbours he ought to eat at
home. It is also to be a fitting
introduction for the Lord’s Supper,
which both symbolises and imparts that
personal fellowship with Christ which
is the permanent basis of their
fellowship with each other. This
thought that the Holy Supper is to come at
the end of it must dominate the
meeting during its entire duration. From
beginning to end the brethren are at
the Lord’s Table and are His guests.
The whole membership of the Church at
Corinth met together at one place on a
fixed day, the Lord’s day, [129] for
their Thanks-giving Meeting. The
meeting was confined to the
member-ship; even catechumens, as well as
inquirers and unbelievers, were
excluded. The partakers brought provisions,
according to their ability. Some of
the brethren, who belonged to that
honoured number who were recognized to
have the prophetic gift, presided.
[130] The food brought was handed over
to them, and they distributed so that
the superfluity of the rich made up
for the lack of the poor. They also
conducted the devotional services at
the feast and at the Holy Supper which
followed. The presidents began with
prayers of thanksgiving for the food
prepared for them and before them;
[131] it was an evidence of the bounty of
God the Creator; a pledge of His
fellowship with them His creatures; a
warrant for their continuous trust in
His Fatherly care and providence; and
a suggestion of the bounties of His
redemption which were more fully
symbolised in the Holy Supper which
followed. [132] During the feast the
brethren were taught to regard
themselves as in God’s presence and His
guests; but this did not hinder a
prevailing sense of gladness, nor prevent
them satisfying their hunger and their
thirst; God the creator had placed
the food and drink before them for
that purpose. [133] It did prevent all
unseemly behaviour, all unbrotherly
conduct in speech or action, and it
insisted on the absence of all who
were at variance with their neighbours
until the quarrel had been put an end
to. [134] During the feast hymns were
sung at intervals, and probably short
exhortations were given by the
prophets. [135] Then when all was
decently finished the Holy Communion was
solemnly celebrated as commanded by
the apostle.
3. It is to be remembered that the
apostle regarded the community of
Christians at Corinth as something
more than a society for performing
together acts of public worship,
whether eucharistic or for prayer, praise
and exhortation. It was a little
self-governing republic. This made the
third kind of meeting necessary. The
common worship of the society,
especially the eucharistic service,
united it with the whole brotherhood of
believers throughout the world, and
showed it to be in the succession from
the ancient people of God; [136] but
it had a corporate unity of its own
which manifested itself in actions for
which the whole body of the
Corinthian believers were responsible.
This local unity took shape in the
meeting of the congregation which is
expressly called the “Church” [137] by
the apostle, at which all the members
apparently had the right of appearing
and taking part in the discussion and
voting—women at first as well as men.
This meeting had charge of the
discipline of the congregation and of the
fraternal relations between the
community and other Christian communities.
Letters seeking apostolic advice were
prepared and dispatched in its name;
[138] it appointed delegates to
represent the church and gave them letters
of commendation, [139] and in all
probability it took charge of the money
gathered in the great collection for
the poor saints at Jerusalem. [140] The
whole administration of the external
affairs of the congregation was under
its control; and this was a work of
very great importance, because it was
this fraternal intercourse that made
visible the essential unity of the
whole Church of Christ.
It exercised the same complete control
over the internal administration of
the affairs of the congregation. It
expelled unworthy members; [141] it
deliberated upon and came to
conclusions about the restoration of brethren
who had fallen away and showed signs
of repentance. [142] It arrived at its
decisions when necessary by voting,
and the vote of the majority decided the
case. [143] We hear nothing in the
epistles of a common congregational fund
for purposes common to the brethren;
if such existed it was probably under
the care of this meeting also.
All these things implied independent
self-government; and the apostle asks
the brethren to undertake another task
which shows even more clearly how
independent and autonomous he expected
the congregation to be. He censured
Christians for bringing their
fellow-believers before the ordinary
law-courts should disputes arise
between brethren; he urged that such
matters should be settled within the
congregation. He used stronger language
about this than about any other side
of the practical expression of their
religious life. “Dare any of you,” he
says, “having a matter against his
neighbour, go to law before the
unrighteous, and not before the saints?”
[144] To grasp the full significance
of his meaning we must remember that
the apostle is speaking to men living
in the busiest commercial city of the
age, and to a little community within
it which included city officials,
merchants, and artizans, as well as
slaves. He is not addressing men
belonging to a small rural village
where life is simple and the occasions of
dispute few and mainly personal. The
Christians of Corinth lived in the
grasp of a highly artificial and
complicated commercial life, where the
complexity of affairs offered any
number of points at which differences of
opinion might honestly arise between
brethren related as masters and
servants, buyers and sellers, traders
and carriers. It was men living in
these surroundings whom the apostle
ordered to abstain from going before the
ordinary law courts for the purpose of
settling disputes which might arise
between them, and whom he commanded to
create tribunals within the community
before which they were to bring all
differences. Have they not one single
“wise man,” he asks, among them who
could act as judge? [145] We are apt to
forget that Christianity came to
establish a new social living as well as a
religion, and that from the first it
demanded that all the relations between
man and man ought to be regulated on
Christian principles. That means now
that our national laws ought to
conform to the principles of the Gospel; it
meant then that all disputes were to
be settled within the Christian
community, and that nothing was to be
taken before the heathen tribunals.
Such is the picture of a Christian
church in the Apostolic age, as it
appears in the pages of the Epistles
of St. Paul to the Corinthians, and,
although no such clear outline is
given us of any other Christian community,
still we are warranted, as we shall
see, in assuming that the Church in
Corinth did not differ much from the
other churches which came into being
through the mission work of the great
apostle to the Gentiles. [146] We see
a little self-governing republic—a
tiny island in a sea of surrounding
paganism—with an active, eager,
enthusiastic life of its own. It has its
meetings for edification, open to all
who care to attend, where the
conversions are made which multiply
the little community; its quieter
meetings for thanksgiving, where none
but the believing brethren assemble,
and where the common meal enshrines
the Holy Supper as the common fellowship
among the brethren embodies the
personal but not solitary fellowship which
each believer has with the Redeemer;
its business meetings where it rules
its members in the true democratic
fashion of a little village republic, and
attaches itself to other brotherhoods
who share the same faith and hope,
trust in and live for the same
Saviour, and have things in common in this
world as well as beyond it. The
meeting for thanksgiving represents the
centre of spiritual repose, the quiet
source of active life and service; the
meeting for edification, the
enthusiastic, eager, aggressive side of the
life and work; and the business
meeting, the deliberative and practical
action of men who recognize that they
are in the world though not of it.
We can see our brethren in the faith
living, loving, working together,
quarrelling and making it up again,
across these long centuries, and all
very human as we are.
The evidence for the independence and
self-government of the churches to
which St. Paul addressed his epistles
is so overwhelming that it is
impossible even to imagine the
presence within them of any ecclesiastical
authority with an origin and power
independent of the assembly of the
congregation, and the apostle does not
make the slightest allusion to any
such governing or controlling
authority, whether vested in one man or in a
group of men. The apostle was so
filled with the sense of high rank to which
all Christians are raised in being
called to be “sons of God” through Jesus
Christ, that in his view this sublime
position makes all believers of equal
standing no matter with what spiritual
gifts and natural abilities
particular individuals may be endowed.
[147] It was a natural and practical
consequence of this thought that all
believers should share the
responsibilities of control in the
community to which they belonged. So we
find it as a matter of fact in the
churches to which St. Paul addressed his
epistles. He did not write to
ecclesiastical persons to whom the brethren
owed obedience as to an authority
different from, and superior to, the
assembly of the congregation. He
addressed his letters to the whole
community, who, in his eyes, are
responsible for the progress and good
behaviour as for the misdeeds and
decline of the society and of individual
Christians within it. His letters are
quite consistent with the existence of
ministering officials who owe their
position to the assembly and are
responsible in the last resort to it;
but they are not consistent with the
existence within the community of any
authority whose power comes directly
from a source outside the
brotherhood.
In his letters to the Church at
Corinth, the apostle makes scant allusion to
office-bearers of any kind. The
meeting of the congregation is the one thing
which gathers up the unity of
administration within the community. The
apostle appears to acquiesce in this
state of matters, unless we consider
the query as to whether there are no
wise men within the society who can
settle disputes within the brotherhood
to be a suggestion that some kind of
recognized officials are needed for
the furtherance of the orderly life of
the local church. In verses 3-15 of
the last chapter of the Epistle to the
Romans, whether these be a short
letter addressed to the Church at Ephesus,
as some think, or whether they be an
integral part of the letter to “all
that be in Rome, beloved of God,
called to be saints,” the apostle
ad-dresses Christians who appear to be
living in an even less organized
condition of Christian fellowship.
They form a unity because of their common
faith and love; but that unity does
not appear to find expression even in
one common congregational meeting.
Little companies, to whom the apostle
unhesitatingly gives the name of
“churches,” have gathered round prominent
persons who appear to have been the
first converts, or those who had placed
their houses at the disposal of the
brethren for holding meetings for
worship, or those who had voluntarily
done special services to their fellow
believers. The same condition of
things is to be found at Colossae and at
Laodicea. The apostle sends greetings
to persons of different sexes and
positions in life, but never to
office-bearers as such. Nor among his many
exhortations does he allude to the
need of organization under hierarchical
authority, still less does he
prescribe a form of organization which was to
be uniform throughout the whole Church
of Christ.
We do, however, find traces of an
organization within the Christian
communities, if we use the word in the
most general way, in the Epistles of
St. Paul. The meeting of the
congregation is almost as prominent in the
Church of the Thessalonians as it is
at Corinth; it exercises discipline;
[148] it selects faithful men to
accompany the apostle to Jerusalem with the
money brought together in the great
collection; [149] it evidently has all
administrative powers in its hands.
But besides this, we hear of men who are
called “those who are over you in the
Lord,” and the brethren of
Thessalonica are told to value them
highly for their works’ sake. [150] In
the Corinthian Church we hear of
“gifts,” of “helps” (antilēpseis), anything
that could be done for the poor or
outcast brethren, either by rich and
influential brethren, or by the
devotion of those who stood on no such
eminence; and guidances or
“governments” (kubernēseis), men who by wise
councils did for the community what
the steersman or pilot does for the
ship. [151] These “gifts” were
bestowed on members of the community for the
service of all; and men who were
recognized to be able to guide wisely as
well as others from whom all kinds of
subordinate service could be expected,
were present within the Christian
community at Corinth. [152] Again the
Corinthian Christians are told “to be
in subjection” to Stephanas, the first
convert, and others like him who have
ministered to the saints and who have
laboured among them, putting heart
into their work. [153] In the Epistle to
the Romans there is express mention of
men who are over their brethren, and
they are told to do their work
diligently. [154] These references and others
show us that there were men in these
Christian societies who were recognized
as leaders and who rendered continuous
and valued services to their brethren
by so doing. They may not have been
office-bearers by election and
appointment, but they were engaged in
doing the work that office-bearers do
in a Christian church.
Altogether apart, however, from the
organization of the local churches,
whether developed or undeveloped, we
find a ministry which existed in all
the churches of the Epistles of St.
Paul, and indeed in all the churches of
the New Testament. We meet everywhere
with men who are called prophets, and
who occupy a distinguished place in
the primitive churches. St. Paul
esteemed them highly. He placed them
second to apostles in his enumeration
of the “gifts” bestowed by God on the
churches. [155] He exhorts the
Corinthian Christians to cultivate the
“gift” of prophecy, and the
Thessalonian Christians are told to
cherish “prophesyings.” It becomes
evident the more these epistles of St.
Paul are studied, that teaching and
exhortation, associated afterwards in
a very special manner with the
functions of rule and leadership, were
in the hands of the prophets to a
very large extent in the apostolic Church,
and that no inquiry into the
“ministry” of the primitive Church can
omit the functions and position of
prophets and prophecy.
This brings us to consider the
“ministry” and organization of the churches
in the apostolic age, a thing necessary
to complete our conception of what a
Christian society was like in these
early times. The subject is interesting,
but confessedly difficult. Yet we have
light enough, from the writings of
the New Testament and the earliest
extra-canonic literature, to show us that
it was entirely unlike anything which
has existed in any part of the
Christian Church from the beginning of
the third century downwards.
Before we begin to inquire what this
ministry and organization were, it may
be useful to note two things: first,
it must be remembered that our Lord has
clearly intimated that leadership
within His Church was to have a
distinctive character of its own; and
secondly, there is from the very first
beginnings of organization a clearly
marked separation between two different
kinds of ministry. [156]
The distinctive character of
leadership in the Christian Church is given in
the saying of our Lord contained in
Luke xxii. 26: “He that is greater among
you let him become as the younger, and
he that is chief as he that doth
serve”; and this junction of service
and leadership is maintained throughout
the Epistles of St. Paul. The
Corinthian Christians were to place themselves
under the guidance of Stephanas and
those like him who had served them and
laboured among them. Those that are
“over the Thessalonian brethren in the
Lord” are the men who spend most
labour upon them. Everywhere service and
leadership go together. These two
thoughts are continually associated with a
third, that of “gifts”; for the
qualifications which fit a man for service
and therefore for rule within the
Church of Christ are always looked upon as
special “gifts” of the Spirit of God,
or charismata. [157] Thus we have
three thoughts: of qualification,
which is the “gift” of God; the service to
the Church of Christ which these
“gifts” enable those who possess them to
perform; and lastly the promise that
such service is honoured by the Father,
[158] and is the basis of leadership
or rule within the Church of Christ.
The earliest evidence we have for the
beginnings of the organization of a
local church is given in Acts vi.,
where we are told about “seven” men being
set apart for what is called the
“ministry of tables,” and which is
contrasted with the “ministry of the
Word.” [159] We have thus at the very
beginnings of organization a division
of ministry, or rather two different
kinds of ministry, within the Church
of Christ in the apostolic age. Harnack
calls this division the “earliest datum in the history of
organization.”
[160] The distinction which comes into
sight at the very beginning runs all
through the apostolic Church, and goes
far down into the sub-apostolic
period. It can be traced through the
Pauline epistles and other New
Testament writings, and down through
such sub-apostolic writings as the
Didache, the Pastor of Hermas, the
Epistle of Barnabas, the Apology of
Justin Martyr, and the writings of
Irenaeus. It is also found in the
Christian literature which does not
belong to the main stream of the
Church’s history, among the Gnostics,
the Marcionites and the Montanists.
[161] The distinction ceases to be an
essential one or one inherent in the
very idea of the ministry when we get
down as far as Tertullian, but it does
not cease entirely. Prophets are found
long after Tertullian’s time, but
they no longer occupy the position
which once was theirs.
The common name for those who belong
to the first kind of ministry is “
those speaking the Word of God,” and
this name is given to them not only in
the New Testament, but also in the
Didache, by Hermas, and by Clement of
Rome. To the second class belonged the
ministry of a local church by
whatever names they came to be called,
pastors, elders, bishops, deacons. We
may call the first kind the prophetic,
and the second kind the local
ministry. The great practical
distinction between the two was that the
prophetic ministry did not mean
office-bearers in a local church; while the
local ministry consisted of these
office-bearers. The one was a ministry to
the whole Church of God, and by its
activity bound all the scattered parts
of the Church visible together; the
other was a ministry within a local
church, and, with the assembly of the
congregate in, manifested and
preserved the unity and the
independence of the local community. In the
apostolic and early sub-apostolic
church the prophetic ministry was
manifestly the higher and the local
ministry the lower; the latter had to
give place to the former even within
the congregation over which they were
office-bearers.
But while this higher ministry can be
clearly separated from the lower
ministry of the local churches, it
does not follow that these office-bearers
did not from the first count among
their number men who possessed the
prophetic gift. Prophecy or the gift
of magnetic utterance might come to any
Christian, and St. Paul desired that
it might belong to all. [162] The two
ministries can be clearly
distinguished, but no hard and fast line can be
drawn between the men who compose the
ministries. The “prophetic” gift of
magnetic speech was so highly esteemed
that it is only natural to suppose
that when congregations chose their
office-bearers they selected men so
gifted, if any such were within their
membership. This, we can see, was the
case in later times. Polycarp was an
office-bearer in the Church at Smyrna,
but he was also a “prophet.” [163]
Ignatius of Antioch was a prophet. [164]
Cyprian and other pastors in North
Africa had the same gift, which was a
personal and not an official source of
enlightenment. [165] We have by no
means obscure indications that what
took place later happened in the
earliest period. The “Seven,” who were
selected for the lower ministry in
Jerusalem, did not confine themselves
to the “service of tables,” but were
found among those who “spoke the Word
of God” with power. [166]
_________________________________________________________________
[86] It is true that we read in Acts
xix. 9, 10 that St. Paul held meetings
in the Schola of Tyrannus: but this is
a unique instance.
[87] Acts ii. 46: klōntes te kat'
oikon a̓́rton.
[88] Acts xii. 12: “The house of Mary,
the mother of John whose surname was
Mark; where many were gathered
together and were praying.”
[89] Acts xxi. 18; xii. 17.
[90] Rom. xvi. 3-5: “Salute Prisca and
Aquila . . . and the church that is
in their house”; xvi. 14: “Salute
Asynsritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas,
Hermas, and the brethren that are with
them”; 15: “Salute Philologus and
Julia, Nereus and his sister, and
O1ympas, and all the saints that are with
them”; 10: “Salute them which are of
the household of Aristobulus”; 11:
“Salute them of the household of
Narcissus.” The groups saluted in verses 10
and 11 may have been a number of
freedmen or slaves belonging to the
households of the two wealthy men
mentioned; but the other three groups are
evidently house-churches. St. Paul
sends salutations to other
house-churches; to that meeting in the
house of Philemon at Colossae
(Philem. 2), to that meeting in the
house of Nymphas in Laodicea (Col. iv.
15), and to that meeting in the house
of Stephanas (1 Cor. xvi. 15).
[91] Rom. xvi. 23.
[92] Compare C. Dehio, Die Genesis der
christlichen Basilika in the
Sitzensber. d. München. Akad. d. Wiss.
1882, ii. 301 ff.
[93] In the so-called Liturgy of St.
Clement there is the following
rubric:— “The order of James, the
brother of John, the son of Zebedee. “And
I James, the brother of John, the son
of Zebedee, command that forthwith the
deacon say, Let none of the hearers,
none of the unbelievers, none of the
heterodox stay. Ye who have prayed the
former prayer, depart. Mothers, take
up your children. Let us stand upright
to present unto the Lord our
offerings with fear and trembling.”
Neale and Littledale, Translations of
Primitive Liturgies, p. 75. The writer
had the privilege of worshipping in a
house-church in the Lebanon under the
shoulder of Sunim in the autumn of
1888. The long low vaulted kitchen had
been swept and garnished for the
occasion, though some of the pots
still stood in a corner. The congregation
sat on the floor—the men together in
rows on the right and the women in rows
on the left. During the services which
preceded the Holy Communion, babies
crawled about the floor making
excursions from mother to father and back
again. When the non-communicants had
left, and the “elements,” as we say in
Scotland, were being uncovered, the
mothers secured the straggling babies
and kept them on their laps during the
whole of the communion service, as
was enjoined in the ancient rubric
quoted above.
[94] The earliest trace we find of
buildings set apart exclusively for
Christian worship dates from the
beginning of the third century (202-210):
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, vii.
5. Clement speaks of a building
erected in honour of God, while he
insists that it is the assembly of the
people and not the place where they
assemble that ought to be called the
church.
[95] The best account of the Agape is
in Keating’s The Agape and the
Eucharist (1901).
[96] St. Paul does not mention the
benediction as forming part of the
Christian worship, but the way in
which it occurs regularly at the beginning
of his epistles, preserving always the
same form, warrants us in supposing
its liturgical use in the manner above
indicated. The invocation of Jesus as
the Lord is made the test of all
Christian public utterance for edification,
and must have preceded the prophetic
addresses if not the whole service: 1
Cor. xii. 3.
[97] The use of the Lord’s prayer is
not mentioned but it may be inferred.
“Paul nowhere mentions the Lord’s
prayer. But we may assume that we have a
trace of it in Rom. viii. 15, and in
Gal. iv. 6. In speaking of the right to
call God Father, he gives the Aramaic form
for father, in each instance
adding a translation; and this is only
to be explained by supposing that he
had in mind a formula which was known
wherever the Gospel had penetrate, and
which, by preserving the original
language, invested the name with peculiar
solemnity, in order to maintain its
significance unimpaired in the
believer’s consciousness.” Weizsäcker,
The Apostolic Age, ii. p. 258 (Eng.
Trans.). According to the Didache the
Lord’s Prayer was to be said three
times every day (Did. viii.).
[98] 1 Cor. xiv. 16.
[99] 1 Cor. xiv. 26.
[100] If it be permitted, as I think
it is, to believe that the author of
the Apocalypse used the outline of the
Christian worship of the earliest age
as the canvas on which he painted his
glorious prophetic visions, then we
can disentangle many a short hymn used
in the services of the apostolic
Church and also get many a detail
about that service. The paraphrase quoted
above combines two of the songs given
in Revelation (v. 9-13). We have
another in xv. 3 f.:—
Great and marvellous are Thy
works,
O Lord God the Almighty;
Righteous and true are Thy ways,
Thou King of the Ages.
Who shall not fear Thee, Lord, and
glorify Thy Name?
For Thou only art Holy;
All the Nations shall come and worship
before Thee;
For Thy righteous acts have been made
manifest;
and yet another in xi. 17:—
We give Thee thanks, O Lord God, the
Almighty,
Which art and which wast;
Because Thou hast taken Thy great
power and didst reign,
And the Nations were wroth,
And Thy wrath came,
And the time of the dead to be
judged,
And the time to give their reward to
Thy servants,
To the prophets and to the
saints,
And to them that fear Thy Name,
The small and the great;
And to them who destroy the
earth.
It is likely that the singing was
antiphonal; there are alternate strophes
in the hymns in the heavenly worship,
and Pliny says that the Christians
“carmen Christo quasi Deo dicere secum
invicem” (Ep. 96 [97]).
[101] Scotch Paraphrases, lxv.
7-11.
[102] St. Paul does not mention the
reading of Scripture in his order of
worship; but it must have been there.
In his epistles to the Corinthians, to
confine ourselves to them, he implies
such a knowledge of the Old Testament
and of deeds and sayings of Jesus as
could only be got from the continuous
public reading of the Scriptures, and
the reciting sentences about Jesus. He
takes it for granted that the Old Testament
Scriptures are known and known
to be the law for life and conduct, in
1 Cor. vi. 16; ix. 8-13; xiv. 21; 2
Cor. vi. 16, 18; viii. 15; ix. 9. In
the beginning of 1 Cor. xv. he clearly
refers to formal statements, not yet
perhaps committed to writing, which he
himself had handed over as he had
received them, and which recited the facts
about the sayings and deeds of Jesus.
The opening and reading from the book
comes after the singing in the
heavenly worship (Rev. v. vi.).
[103] Instruction (didachē),
teaching or doctrine includes the “wisdom” and
“knowledge” of 1 Cor. xii. 8;
“wisdom,” (logos sophias) is described in 1
Cor. ii. 7; vi. 5; and “knowledge”
(logos gnōseōs) in 2 Cor. x. 5; xi. 6;
and perhaps the pistis of 1 Cor. xii.
9, which may mean depth of loyal
spiritual experience.
[104] 1 Cor. xiv. 31.
[105] 1 Cor. xiv. 30.
[106] I have followed Weizsäcker’s
conception of what was meant by speaking
“in a tongue.” These things have to be
noted about the phenomenon. It
occurred in prayer only (1 Cor. xiv.
2, 14); it appeared like a soliloquy (1
Cor. xiv. 2); the speaker edified
himself (xiv. 4), but seems to have lost
conscious control over himself (xiv.
14); what was said was not intelligible
to others (xiv: 2); it could be
compared to the sound of a trumpet which
gave no clear call (xiv. 7, 8); or to
the use of a foreign and barbarous
language (xiv. 10, 11); the speaker in
a tongue ought to interpret what he
has said, and that he may be able to
do this he ought to pray for divine
assistance (xiv. 13); that such
speaking was not all of one sort—there were
“kinds of tongues” (xii. 10). Upon the
whole then we may conceive it to have
been rapt ejaculatory prayer uttered
during unrestrained emotion, where
words often took the place of
sentences. This enables us to see how
brethren, who were sympathetio enough,
could follow the obscure windings of
thought and expression, and interpret.
Our knowledge is exclusively derived
from 1 Cor. xiv.; the two passages in
Acts x. 46; xix; 8, and the references
in the post-apostolic period do not
enlighten us. Compare Heinrici, Das
Erste Sendschreiben an die Korinther,
pp. 376-393; Bleek, Studien u.
Kritiken (1829), pp. 3-79; Hilgenfeld,
Die Glossolalie in der alien Kirche,
Leipzig, 1850. This “gift” of tongues
is referred to by Irenaeus, v. 6, and
Tertullian, Adv. Marcion, v. 8.
[107] 1 Cor. xiv. 27, 28.
[108] 1 Cor. xiv. 25.
[109] The other form of doxology common
to St. Paul’s epistles is “Unto God
our Father, be glory for ever, Amen.”
These doxologies are found running
through St. Paul’s and other epistles
in the New Testament. They are used to
end a prophetic utterance, or an
exposition of divine wisdom, and they occur
in the description of the heavenly
worship in the Apocalypse.
[110] 1 Cor. xiv. 33; xi. 16.
[111] 1 Cor. xiv. 39. The order of
service is given by St. Paul in 1 Cor.
xiv. 26; where the “psalm” includes
the supplication and thanksgiving of
xiv. 16.
[112] 1 Cor. xiv. 33, 40.
[113] 1 Cor. xiv. 29-33.
[114] 1 Cor. xii. 4 ff.: cf. Eph. iv.
16.
[115] 1 Cor. xv. 32.
[116] 1 Cor. iv. 9; vii. 31.
[117] 1 Cor. ix. 24-27.
[118] 1 Cor. viii. 10.
[119] 1 Cor. i. 26.
[120] Erastus, Rom. xvi. 23.
[121] Crispus, Acts xviii. 8; 1 Cor.
i. 14.
[122] 1 Cor. i. 11.
[123] Rom. xvi. 23; 1 Cor. i.
14.
[124] It is strange that, apart from
the descriptions of the Last Supper in
the Synoptic Gospels (and for obvious
reasons they cannot be taken as
descriptions of the way in which the
Eucharistic service was celebrated in
the Apostolic and post-Apostolic
Church), we have no very clear account of
how the Service of Thanksgiving was
observed among the primitive Christians
till the middle of the second century,
when we have the statement of Justin
Martyr in his Apology, i. 67. The
earliest account, so far as I know, which
gives as full a description of the
Holy Communion as we have of the meeting
for exhortation in the First Epistle
to the Corinthians, is to be found in
the Canons of Hippolytus (Gebhardt and
Harnack, Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI.
iv. pp. 118-22). Yet the whole line of
the history of worship, of the
organization of the local churches,
and of the administration of
ecclesiastical property follows the
development of this part of the public
worship of the Church. We can learn
many details, but we have no complete
account. In the account of the Last
Supper, here in the Epistle to the
Corinthians, in the Didache (x. 1), in
the description of Pliny, in Clement
of Alex. (Paidagogos, ii. 1), in
Ignatius (Ad Smyrnæos, viii.), the
celebration follows a common meal; in
Justin it takes place during the
meeting for exhortation; in the Canons of Hippolytus, the meeting
for
exhortation, the Holy Communion, and
the Lord's day common meal are all
separate from each other.
[125] 1 Cor. xi. 20.
[126] 1 Cor. xi. 21.
[127] 1 Cor. xi. 22.
[128] 1 Cor. xi. 30-32.
[129] The Lord’s day: Acts xx. 7;
Didache, xiv. 1; Canons of Hippolytus
(Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI. iv. p.
105, cf. p. 183 n.).
[130] Didache, x.
[131] The beautiful prayer given in
the Didache is (x.): “We thank Thee,
Holy Father, for Thy holy name, which
Thou hast caused to dwell in our
hearts, and for the knowledge and
faith and immortality which Thou hast made
known to us through Jesus Thy Servant;
to Thee be the glory for ever. Thou,
Lord Almighty, didst create all things
for Thy Name’s sake, both food and
drink Thou didst give to men for
enjoyment, in order that they might give
thanks to Thee; but to us Thou hast
graciously given spiritual food and
drink and eternal life through Thy
Servant. Before all things we thank Thee
that Thou art Mighty; to Thee be the
glory for ever. Remember Thy Church,
Lord, to deliver it from every evil
and to make it perfect in Thy Love, and
gather it from the four winds, the
sanctified, into Thy Kingdom. Let Grace
come and let this world pass away.
Hosanna to the Son of David. Whoever is
holy, let him come; whoever is not let
him depart. Maranatha. Amen.” This
prayer was to be said at the close of
the feast. “Now after ye are filled
thus do ye give thanks” is the
introductory sentence. It is also to be
remembered that when prophets
conducted the love-feast they were not
confined to prescribed prayers.
“Permit the prophets to give thanks as much
as they will.”
[132] The common meals which our Lord
shared with His disciples were always
looked upon as showing His intimate
fellowship with them, and spiritual
associations clustering round the
thought were enhanced by His frequent
comparison of the Kingdom of God to a
common meal (Matt. xxii. 4; Luke xiv.
15 f.; Luke xxii. 30; cf. Rev. iii.
20). Those who had sat at meat with Him
supposed that they had a claim upon
Him (Luke xiii. 26); while the
miraculous feeding was a picture of
the providence of God which ought to
awaken our continuous trust in Him.
There are evidences of all these
thoughts.
[133] The note of gladness is always
marked. The brethren in the primitive
Church at Jerusalem “breaking bread at
home, did eat with gladness and
singleness of heart.” Acts ii. 46; cf.
Acts xxvii. 33-35. “Both food and
drink Thou didst give to man for
enjoyment, in order that they might give
thanks to Thee,” Didache, x. “Edant
bibantque ad satietatem, neque vero ad
ebrietatem; sed in divina praesentia
cum laude Dei,” Canons of Hippolytus
(Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI, iv. p.
107).
[134] ” But every one that hath
controversy with his friend let him not come
together with you until they be
reconciled,” Didache, xiv. In the special
“Lord’s day” love-feast which may be
given to the poor, as set forth in the
Canons of Hippolytus, it is said: “Ne
quis multum loquatur neve clamet, ne
forte vos irrideant, neve sint
scandalo hominibus, ita ut in contumeliam
vertatur qui vos invitavit, cum
appareat, vos a bono ordine aberrare”
(Texte, etc. VI. iv. p. 108). These
love-feasts naturally became the means
of helping the poor attached to the
Christian congregations, as we can see
in the primitive Church at Jerusalem
(Acts vi. 1, 2), and from such ancient
ecclesiastical manuals as the Canons
of Hippolytus. Gentile Christians had
been accustomed to pagan banquets and
the more modest common meals of the
“gilds,” and could the more readily
accommodate themselves to the Christian
observance, but this familiarity with
the heathen usages would the more
readily lead to such corruptions as
St. Paul censures in the Corinthian
Church. Cf. W. Liebenam, Zur
Geschichte u. Organisation des Römischen
Vereinswesens, pp. 260-261. Liebenam
thinks that the evidence goes to prove
that the eating at these common meals
of the confraternities was for the
most part frugal and that the excess
arose from over-drinking. He and
Foucart (Des associations religieuses
chez les Grecs, p. 153 ff.) have
collected the evidence. The excesses
at Corinth arose from the pagan
associations connected either with
these common meals of the confraternities
or more probably with the temple
banquets (1 Cor. x. 14-22).
[135] “Psalmos recitent, antequam
recedant,” Can. Hipp. (Texte, VI. iv. 106)
[136] 1 Cor. x. 1-4.
[137] 1 Cor. xiv. 19, 34, 35; xi.
18.
[138] 1 Cor. vii. 1. The epistle known
as the First Epistle of Clement
begins: “The Church of Rome to the
Church of Corinth, elect and consecrate,
greeting.”
[139] 2 Cor. iii. 1, 2; viii.
19.
[140] 1 Cor. xvi. 1-2.
[141] 1 Cor: v. 1-8.
[142] 2 Cor. ii. 6-9.
[143] 2 Cor. ii. 6
[144] 1 Cor. vi. 1. This advice of St.
Paul passed into the ecclesiastical
legislation of the primitive Church.
We read in the Apostolic Constitutions
(II. xlvi. xlvii. xlviii. xlix.): “Let
not therefore the heathen know of
your differences among one another,
nor do you receive unbelievers as
witnesses against yourselves, nor be
judged by them . . . but render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s .
. . as tribute, taxes or
poll-money. . . . Let your judicatures
be held on the second day of the
week, that if any controversy arise
about your sentence, having an interval
till the Sabbath, you may be able to
set the controversy right and to reduce
those to peace who have the contests
one with another before the Lord’s day.
Let the deacons and the elders be
present at your judicatures, to judge
without acceptance of persons, as men
of God with clear conscience. . . . Do
not pass the same sentence for every
sin, but one suitable to each crime,
distinguishing all the several sorts
of offences with much prudence, the
great from the little. Treat a wicked
action after one manner, and a wicked
word after another; a bare intention
still otherwise . . . Some thou shalt
curb with threatenings only; some thou
shalt punish with fines to the poor;
some thou shalt mortify with fastings;
others shalt thou separate according
to the greatness of their several
crimes. . . . When the parties are both
present (for we will not call them
brethren until they receive each other in
peace) examine diligently concerning
those who appear before you. . . .”
[145] 1 Cor. vi. 5.
[146] Compare Weizsäcker’s The
Apostolic Age, ii. 246-290. Heinrici, Das
Erste Sendschreiben des Apostels
Paulus an die Korinther, passim.
[147] Gal. iii. 26-28; cf. 1 Cor. xii.
xiii.
[148] 1 Thess. v. 14.
[149] 2 Cor. viii. 19.
[150] 1 Thess. v. 13.
[151] Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p.
159.
[152] 1 Cor. xii. 28.
[153] 1 Cor. xvi. 15, 16. The phrase
“to minister unto the saints” (eis
diakonian tois hagiois) corresponds
with the diakonein trapezais of Acts vi.
2. This ministry to the saints, which
is connected with leadership of some
kind, is expanded in the Epistle to
the Romans to include liberality,
showing mercy and leadership (Rom.
xii. 6-8); and these three heads read
like a brief summary of the
qualifications of the elder or episcopus
enumerated in the First Epistle to
Timothy (1 Tim. iii. 1-9). In the First
Epistle to the Thessalonians the
thought of ministry to the saints includes
the three heads of caring for the
spiritual and bodily wants of the
brethren, having oversight of moral
behaviour, and leadership or
presidency—kopiōntes,
nouthetountes, and proistamenoi. (1 Thess. v. 12).
[154] Rom. xii. 8.
[155] 1 Cor. xii. 28.
[156] If we examine the various uses
of the words “minister” or “servant” or
“deacon” (diakonos), “he who ministers
or serves” (ho diakonōn) “ministry or
service” (di9akonia), and “to minister
or to serve” (diakonein) we have the
following extensive application:— 1.
The ordinary service which a hired
servant renders to his master, such as
waiting at table, etc., as in Luke
xii. 37 and elsewhere. 2. Kindly
personal attentions rendered to our Lord,
as by St. Peter’s mother-in law (Matt.
viii. 15; Mk. i. 31; Luke iv. 39), by
Martha (Lu. x. 40; John xii. 2), or by
the women from Galilee (Matt. xxvii.
55; Mk. xv. 41; Luke viii. 3); or
rendered to our Lord’s followers and
looked on as done to Himself (Matt.
xxv. 44; Heb. vi. 10); or rendered to
St. Paul by Timothy, Erastus and Onesimus
(Acts xix. 22; Philem. 13; 2 Tim.
i. 18). 3. The service of angels
rendered to our Lord and to men (Matt. iv.
11; Mark i. 13; Heb. i. 14). 4. The
service rendered by the O. T. economy (1
Peter i. 12; 2 Cor. iii. 7). 5. The
work of our Lord Himself (Matt. xx. 28;
Mark x. 45; Luke xxii. 26, 27; 2 Cor.
iii. 8; v. 18; Rom. xv. 8). 6. WITHIN
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH we find the
following widely extended application:— a.
Discipleship in general (John xii.
26). b. Service rendered to the Church
because of “gifts” bestowed and
specially connected with the bestowal and
posesssion of these “gifts” (Rom. xii.
7; 1 Cor. xii. 5; 1 Peter iv. 10.
11). c. Hence all kinds of service,
whether the “ministry of the Word” or
ministry not distinctly of the Word
(Acts vi. 2; Matt. xx. 26; xxiii. 11;
Mark ix. 35; x. 43). d. Specifically
the “ministry of the Word” (Acts vi. 4;
Eph. iv. 12; 2 Tim. iv. 5); and most
frequently the “Apostleship” (Acts i.
17; xx. 24; xxi. 19; Rom. xi. 13; 2
Cor. iii. 3, 6; iv. 1; vi. 3 f.; 1 Tim.
i. 12; 1 Cor. iii. 5; Eph. iii. 7;
Col. i. 23, 25). e. Service which was not
a “ministry of the Word”:—Feeding the
poor (Acts vi. 1); providing, bringing
and dispensing resources in the time
of famine (Acts xi. 29; xii. 25);
organizing, gathering and conveying
the great collection for the poor saints
at Jerusalem (Rom. xv. 25, 31; 2 Cor.
viii. 4, 19, 20; ix. 1, 12, 13); to
which we may probably add the service
of the whole Church of Thyatira (Rev.
ii. 19). f. Services rendered by
specially named men, and which probably
included both the “ministry of the
Word” and other kinds of service:—The
ministry of Stephanas (1 Cor. xvi.
15), of Archippus (Col. iv. 17), of
Tychicus (Eph. vi. 21; Col. iv. 7), of
Epaphras (Col. i. 7), and of Timothy
(1 Thess. iii. 2; 1 Tim. iv. 6). g.
Men who are office-bearers in a local
church and are called “deacons” as a
title of office (1 Tim. iii. 8-13); men
who may be office-bearers but who may
get the name applied to them not
because of office but because of the
work they do—a work which has not yet
ripened into a permanent office as in
Phil. i. 1, and as in Rom. xvi. 1
(“Phoebe, our sister, who is a deacon
of the Church which is at Cenchrea,”
and who is also called “patroness”).
7. The idea of “rule” is conveyed in
Rom. xiii. 4, where kings are called
the “deacons” of God; and in John xii.
26; Matt. xxv. 44; Heb. vi. 10, where
it is said that those who serve are
honoured of the Father, and where all
service done to the Church or its
members is said to be done to our Lord
Himself.
[157] The “gifts” (charismata) are
individual capacities or excellencies
laid hold on, strengthened, vivified
and applied by the Spirit to service
within the community. They are the
natural capacities which men possess
apart from their own power of
acquiring them and which come from the free
bounty of God the Creator. Men are not
all alike; their capacities and
natural powers differ; and thus when
the Spirit works through these powers
there is nothing mechanical in the
activities set in motion. These natural
endowments are laid hold on by the
Spirit, strengthened by His agency, and
used, each of them, for a special
service (diakonia) within the Christian
society. They may be the natural
capacities for teaching, for
evangelization, for the vision, and
utterances of spiritual truths, for
ecstatic praise, for leadership of
men, for organization, for duties to the
poor and sick, for the performance of
all the practical and social duties
needed for the welfare of the
community. These natural endowments are seized
by the Spirit and so influenced that
they become the specialized “gifts” of
the Spirit, and fit the possessors for
all kinds of service, so that as
Chrysostom says, “energēmata kai
charismata kai diakoniai onomatōn diaphorai
monai, epei pragmata ta auta” (Cat.
233). Lists of these “gifts” are given,
none of them being meant to be
exhaustive. In 1 Cor. xii. 4-11 appear: the
word of wisdom (lógos
sophías), the word of knowledge (lógos
gnṓseōs),
faith (pístis) gifts of healing
(charísmata i̓amátōn), prophecy
(prophēteía), workings of
powers (e̓nergḗmata
dunámeōn), testing of
spirits (diakríseis
pneumátōn), kinds of tongues (génē glōssōn),
and
interpretation of tongues
(e̔rmēneía glōssōn). In 1 Cor. xii. 28-31
appear:
apostles (a̓póstoloi),
prophets (prophētai), teachers (didáskaloi), powers
(dunámeis), gifts of healing
(charísmata iama̜tōn), helps (antilēpseis),
governments (kubernēseis), kinds
of tongues (genē glōssōn). In Rom. xii. 6-8
appear:—prophecy (prophēteia),
service (diakonia), teaching (didaskalia),
the liberal man (ho metadidous), the
ruler (ho proistamenos), and the
merciful man (ho eleōn). And in
Eph. iv. 11 we have: Apostles (apostoloi),
prophets (prophētai), evangelists
(euangelistai), pastors and teachers
(poimenas kai didaskaloi). To these we
may add “a man’s capacity for the
married or celibate life” (1 Cor. vii.
7). The conception of “gifts” in
their relation to the Christian
society is given in its widest extent in 1
Peter iv. 9-11: “Using hospitality one
to another without murmuring: each,
as he bath received a ‘gift,’ ministering
it to one another, as good
stewards of the manifold bounty of
God.”
[158] John iii. 26.
[159] Acts vi. 2.
[160] Expositor, Jan.–June, 1887, p.
324.
[161] The evidence has been collected
by Harnack in Texte u. Untersuchungen,
II. ii. pp. 111 f.
[162] 1 Cor. xiv. 5.
[163] “The glorious martyr Polycarp,
who was found an apostolic and
prophetic teacher in our own time.”
Epistle of the Smyrnaeans, 16.
[164] Epistle to the Philadelphians,
7.
[165] Epistles, lvii. 5 (liii.): lxvi.
10 (lxviii.).
[166] Acts viii. 5, 40.
_________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER III
THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY
St. Paul’s conception of a Christian
community [167] is a body of which the
Spirit of Christ is the soul. The
individual members are all full of the
Spirit, and their individual powers
and capacities are laid hold of,
vivified, and strengthened by the
indwelling Spirit in such a way that each
is “gifted” and enabled to do some special
service for Christ and for His
Church in the society in which he is
placed. Every true Christian is
“gifted” in this way. In this respect
all are equal and of the same
spiritual rank. The equality, however,
is neither monotonous nor mechanical.
Men have different natural endowments,
and these lead to a diversity of
“gifts,” all of which are serviceable
in their places, and enable the
separate members to perform different
services, useful and necessary, for
the spiritual life of the whole
community and for the growth in
sanctification of every member. Some
have special “gifts” bestowed on them
which enable them to do corresponding
services, and some are “gifted” in a
pre-eminent degree. Thus, although
every Christian is the dwelling place of
the Spirit, and is therefore to be
called “spiritual” [168] (pneumatikos),
some are more fitted to take leading
parts than others, and are called the
“spiritual” in a narrower and stricter
sense of the word. These specialized
gifts of the Spirit included all kinds
of service, and were all, in their
own place, valuable and equally the
“gifts” of the one Spirit. Some of them,
however, were sure to be more
appreciated than others. To men and women,
quivering with a new fresh spiritual
life, nothing could be more thirsted
after than to hear again and again
renewed utterances of that “word of the
Spirit,” which had first awakened in
them the new life they were living.
Hence among the specially “gifted”
persons, those who had the “gift” to
speak the “Word of God,” for
edification and in exhortation, took a foremost
place, and were specially honoured.
[169] It would be a mistake, however, to
call this ministry of the “Word” the
“Charismatic Ministry,” as if it alone
depended on and came from the “gifts”
of the Spirit; for every kind of
service comes [170] from a “gift,” and
the ministry of attending to the poor
and the sick, or advising and leading
the community with wise counsels, are
equally charismatic. [171]
St. Paul always assumes that this
“gift” of speaking the “Word of God”
required a “gift” in the hearers which
corresponded to the “gift” in the
speakers, and that it would have small
effect apart from the general
“gift” of discernment of spirits. The
spiritual voice needs the spiritual
ear. The ministry of the Word depends
for its effectiveness upon the
ministry of discernment: for the
“natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness unto him; and he cannot know
them because they are spiritually
examined.” [172] There was therefore in
this ministry of the “Word” the
exercise of a two-fold “gift” or charisma;
on the one hand the charisma which
enabled the speaker to declare what was
the message of God, and on the other
hand the charisma in the hearers which
enabled them to recognize whether the
message was really what it professed
to be, a declaration of the Spirit, to
receive it if it was and to reject it
if it was not. The duty laid upon the
speakers was to speak forth the Word
of God in the proportion of the faith
that was in them, or to the full
measure of the Christ that was in
them; and the duty laid upon the hearers
was to test whether what was said to
them was really an utterance of the
Spirit. [173]
This “ministry of the Word” was the
creative agency in the primitive Church,
and it may almost be said to have had
the same function throughout the
centuries since. It was overthrown or
thrust aside and placed under
subjection to an official ministry
springing out of the congregation, and it
has never regained the recognized
position it had in the first century and a
half. But whenever the Church of
Christ has to be awakened out of a state of
lethargy, this unofficial ministry of
the Word regains its old power though
official sanction be withheld. From
point of view, and that not the least
important, the history of the Church
flows on from one time of revival to
another, and whether we take the
awakenings in the old Catholic, the
mediaeval, or the modern Church, these
have always been the work of men
specially gifted with the power of
seeing and declaring the secrets of the
deepest Christian life, and the effect
of their work has always been
proportionate to the spiritual
receptivity of the generation they have
spoken to. The Reformation movement,
which may be simply described as the
translation into articulate thought of
the heart religion of the mediaeval
Church, and which revived in so many
ways the ideas and usages of the
primitive times, has expressed the two
cardinal ideas of this primitive
ministry of the Word, in its
declaration that the essential duty of the
ministry of the Church is the proclamation
of the Gospel, and in its
statement that the principle of
authority in the last resort is always the
witness of the Spirit in the hearts of
believers. [174]
The divine “gift,” whose possession
placed men among the class of those who
spoke the Word of God (lalountes ton
logon tou Theou) [175] gave the
primitive Church its preaching
ministry. [176] Those so endowed were in no
sense office-bearers in any one
Christian community; they were not elected
to an office: they were not set apart
by any ecclesiastical ceremony; the
Word of God came to them, and they
spoke the message that had been sent
them. They all had the divine call
manifested in the “gift” they possessed
and could use. They were sent for the
extension and edification of the whole
Church of God, and although they used
their gifts in the meetings of the
local communities yet they were always
to be conceived as the ministers of
the Church universal. Some of them
were wanderers by the very nature of the
work they were called to; many of
them, perhaps most, did not confine
themselves to one community. They came
and went as they pleased. They were
not responsible to any society of
Christians. The local church could only
test them when they appeared, and
could receive or reject their
ministrations. The picture of these
wandering preachers, men burdened by no
cares of office, with no pastoral
duties, coming suddenly into a Christian
community, doing their work there and
as suddenly departing, is a very vivid
one in sub-apostolic literature. Their
presence—men who were the servants of
all the churches and of no one
church—was a great bond which linked together
all the scattered independent local
churches and made them one corporate
whole.
We find in this “prophetic ministry” a
threefold division. They are
apostles, prophets and teachers. It
does not seem possible to make a very
strict or mechanical division between
the kinds of “Word of God” spoken by
each class of men, but it may be said
that what was needed for zealous
missionary endeavour was the
distinguishing characteristic of the first
class, exhortation and admonition of
the second, and instruction of the
third. In virtue of their personal
“gifts” they were the venerated but not
official leaders [177]
(hēgoumenoi) of every community where they were for
the time being to be found, and were
worthy, not only of honour, but of
honorarium. [178] We can trace this
threefold ministry of the Word from the
most primitive times down till the end
of the second century, if not later.
It existed in the oldest Gentile
Christian community, that of Antioch, where
a number of prophets and teachers sent
forth two apostles from among their
own number. [179] Apostles, prophets
and teachers are mentioned in the First
Epistle to the Corinthians and in the
Epistle to the Ephesians. [180] The
same threefold ministry is given in
the Pastor of Hermas, which dates about
[181] 140 A.D., and in the Pseudo-Clementine
Homilies, which can scarcely be
earlier than 200 A.D. [182] In all
these authorities we have the three
classes mentioned together, and in all
save one we have them in the same
order. The three classes are also
placed in pairs: apostles and prophets in
the Epistle to the Ephesians and in
the Apocalypse; [183] prophets and
teachers in the Didache and in the
Pseudo-Clementine Letters; [184] apostles
and teachers in Hermas and in the
Epistles to Timothy. [185]
1. Apostles. The distinguishing
characteristic of an apostle [186] was that
he had given himself, and that for
life, [187] to be a missionary, preaching
the gospel of the Kingdom of Christ to
those who did not know it. He had
received the “gift” of speaking the
“Word of God,” and he was distinguished
from others who had the same “gift” in
this, that he had been called either
inwardly or outwardly to make this
special use of it. The prophet and the
teacher had the same “gift” in the
same or in less measure than the apostle,
but they found their sphere of its use
within the Christian community, while
the apostle’s sphere was for the most
part outside, among those who were not
yet within the Church of Christ. They
built on the foundation laid by the
apostle; he laid the foundation for
others to build upon. [188] The apostles
were men who in virtue of the
implanted “gift” of “speaking the Word of
God” and of the “call” impelling them,
were sent forth to be the heralds of
the kingdom of Christ. This was their
life-work. They were not appointed to
an office, in the ecclesiastical sense
of the word, but to a work in the
prosecution of which they had to do
all that is the inevitable accompaniment
of missionary activity in all ages of the
Church’s history.
Our Lord has Himself shown us where to
look for the origin and meaning of
the term “apostle.” He declared
Himself to be the Apostle or Sent One of the
Father; as the Father had sent Him, so
He sent others in His name to be His
apostles or sent ones, to deliver His
message of salvation. [189] The
apostles were the representatives and
“envoys” of Christ, the pioneers of
Christianity. The word, therefore,
lends itself to a very wide application,
for in a sense every Christian ought
to be an “ envoy “ or herald of the
Master. Our Lord sanctioned the widest
use of the word when He declared that
whoever received a little child in His
name received Himself; [190] the
little ones can be and are His
“envoys.”
But there were concentric rings in
this wide circle of application; and the
men belonging to each were
distinguished from the others by the kind of
preparation they had received, and by
the nature of the call which had come
to them.
Our Lord, personally and by living
human voice, selected twelve men and
called them “apostles,” [191] that by
personal companionship with Him in the
inner circle of His disciples, and by
experience gained in a limited mission
of apprenticeship among the villages
of Galilee, where following their
Master’s example closely they preached
and cast out demons, they might have
the training to be witnesses for Him
in the universal mission which was to
be theirs after His death. Their
preparation was their intimate personal
companionship with their Lord and
their apprentice work under His eyes.
Their call was the living voice of the
Master while He was with them in the
flesh. These two things separated the
“Eleven” from all others; they were
both of them incommunicable and rested
on a unique experience.
One, Matthias, who had enjoyed the
personal companionship with Jesus, though
in a lesser degree, and who had been
an eyewitness during the Lord’s
ministry on earth and could testify to
the Resurrection, was called by the
voice of his fellow-believers and by
the decision of the lot to the same
“service and sending forth” (diakonia
kai apostolē). [192] His preparation
was the same as that of the “Eleven,”
though less complete; but his call was
quite different.
Another, Paul, was “called” and
prepared by Jesus Himself, but in visions
and inward inspirations. We have no
evidence that St. Paul ever saw Jesus in
the flesh, still less that he had any
opportunity of converse with Him. His
“call” came to him on the road to
Damascus in the vision of the Risen Christ
Whom he had been persecuting; it was
repeated from the lips of Ananias, also
instructed in vision; [193] it came to
him over and over again in his lonely
musings, where he was obliged to think
out for himself the principles which
were to guide him in his new life. His
preparation was altogether different
both from that of the “Eleven” and of
Matthias. They had been gradually
prepared; they had been led step by
step, and had been weaned from their old
life in half-conscious ways. He had
been torn out of his by a sudden wrench;
and his preparation had been given him
in inward moral struggle and
spiritual experience, in musings and
visions and raptures, “whether in the
body or out of the body” he could not
tell. [194] It was this difference in
“call” and preparation—the difference
between personal intercourse with
Jesus in the flesh and intercourse
with Him in visions—that separated St.
Paul from the “Eleven.” And it was
this difference that St. Paul’s opponents
of the “sect of the Pharisees who
believed” seized upon when they refused to
acknowledge his claims to apostolic
authority. If we take the
Pseudo-Clementine literature to
represent the opinions of these men and
their successors, and discern in the
attacks made on Simon Magus an example
of their arguments against the apostle
to the Gentiles, there is abundant
proof of this. The whole argument in
the last chapter of the 17th Homily
turns on the impossibility of trusting
to information received in visions,
or of verifying and authenticating
them. The argument comes to a climax in
the question: “Can any one be rendered
fit for instruction through visions?
And if you say, ‘It is possible,’ then I ask, Why did our teacher abide
and
discourse a whole year to those who
were awake? And how are we to believe
your word, when you tell us that He
appeared to you?” [195]
In others who were called “apostles”
the Spirit had implanted the inward
“call” to consecrate themselves to a
life of missionary endeavour, and had
given them that gift of speaking the
Word of God which made the “call”
fruitful. Yet another class had been
selected by Christian communities and
sent forth to be their apostles, the
“apostles of the churches,” who were
also the apostles of the Master, and
who were called by St. Paul “the glory
of Christ.” [196]
Men belonging to all these classes,
and to others besides, are called
“apostles” in the writings of the New
Testament, where the name is by no
means confined to the “Eleven,”
Matthias, and St. Paul. Barnabas [197] was
an “apostle.” He had been selected at
the bidding of the Spirit by the
circle of prophets and teachers at
Antioch, and had been sent, with prayer
and laying on of hands, to be the
companion missionary of St. Paul; he is
called an apostle to the Gentiles in
the Epistle to the Galatians, and St.
Paul associates him with himself when
he claims the privileges everywhere
accorded to acknowledged apostles.
Andronicus and Junias were “apostles,”
who had been in Christ before St.
Paul. [198] Silas or Silvanus and Timothy
are, on the most natural
interpretation, classed as apostles in the First
Epistle to the Thessalonians. St. Paul
and his companions in his missionary
work among the Thessalonians had
received no material support for their
labours, “though we might have been
burdensome to you, being apostles of
Christ”; and the we most probably
includes Silas and Timothy, whose names
appear with that of St. Paul in the
superscription of the letter. [199] In 1
Cor. iv. 9, when St. Paul says: “I
think that God hath set forth us the
apostles last of all as men doomed to
death; for we are a spectacle unto the
world, both to angels and to men,”
Apollos, on the most natural
interpretation of the passage, is
classed with St. Paul among the apostles
who are thus set forth. [200]
Epaphroditus is mentioned as one of the
“apostles of the churches,” (the
church of Philippi), and is called by St.
Paul “my brother, and fellow-worker
and fellow-soldier.” [201] Many scholars
include James the brother of our Lord
among those called apostles by St.
Paul; but the evidence is very
doubtful, and James had not the missionary
work which belongs to an apostle.
[202] Besides these St. Paul speaks of men
whom he calls ironically “pre-eminent
apostles,” [203] and more gravely
“false apostles,” who had come among
the Corinthian believers to seduce them
from their allegiance to the apostle,
probably from Jerusalem, furnished
with letters of commendation [204]
from St. Paul’s enemies there, and who
had insinuated that St. Paul was no
true apostle. There is no reason to
believe that St. Paul denied that
these men were apostles so far as outward
marks went. They were missionaries and
had given themselves to the work;
they had come furnished with
credentials. In all outward respects they were
apostles like many others; but their
message was false; they preached
another Christ; they were among the
false prophets who the Master had said
would come. [205]
As the earlier decades passed the
number of men who were called apostles
increased rather than diminished. They
were wandering missionaries whose
special duties were to the heathen and
to the unconverted. In writings like
the Didache they are brought vividly
before us. They were highly honoured,
[206] but had to be severely tested.
They were not expected to remain long
within a Christian community nor to
fare softly when they were there. They
were the special envoys of One Whose
kingdom is not of this world, and Who
had sent forth His earliest apostles
with the words: “Go, provide neither
gold nor silver nor brass in your
girdle nor wallet for your journey,
neither two coats, neither shoes nor
staff.” [207] Primitive Christians
insisted on as rigorous an imitation
as did St. Francis, and accordingly
formulated the saying into the rule
that if the apostle spent more than
three days among his fellow
Christians, if he asked for money, if he were
not content with bread and water, he
was no true apostle, and was not to be
received. [208]
All these men, called apostles, have
one distinguishing characteristic: they
have given themselves for life to be
missionary preachers of the Gospel of
the Kingdom of Christ. Hence it seems
superfluous to accumulate from the
epistles of St. Paul a great variety
of marks of the apostolic character and
work. [209] The one distinctive
feature about all of them was not so much
what they were, but what they did.
They were all engaged in a life work of a
peculiar kind, aggressive pioneering
missionary labour. The crowning
vindication of their career was what
they put into it and what they were
able to accomplish; their courage,
[210] their self-sacrificing endurance,
[211] the “signs, wonders and mighty
deeds” which accompanied their labours,
[212] and, above all, the results of
their work. It was to this last that
St. Paul appealed over and over again.
His Corinthian converts were the seal
of his apostleship; he did not need
written certificates from coterie or
council, from Jerusalem or Antioch, for
the Corinthians were his living
“letter” of commendation known and
read of all men. [213] He appealed to
what every great missionary would
point to if he were asked to justify his
work, to what our Lord Himself
appealed to when He was put to the question.
[214]
There could not but be gradations in
this wide company of apostles, and
these depended on things personal and
incommunicable. Nothing could take
from the “Eleven” the fact that they
had been personally selected and
trained for their missionary work by
Jesus while He was still with them in
the flesh. This gave them a unique
position not only within the Jewish
Christian Church, but also throughout
all Christendom. This also was the
basis of the apostolate in the narrower
sense of the term. Others might be,
and were, “separated unto the Gospel
of God,” might devote themselves, in
obedience to the “call” that came, to
a life of active missionary work, and
have their “call” vindicated in the
abundant fruit of their labours. The
Risen Christ had appeared to many
others besides themselves. What separated
the “Eleven” from other apostles was
that the Lord, while in the flesh, had
selected them and had spent long
months in training them for their work.
They were missionaries like the
others, and made missionary tours like them,
but this special and unique
preparation which no others possessed gave them
a position apart. St. Paul claimed
that he too belonged to this inner
circle; his claims were admitted when
Peter, James and John “saw that he had
been entrusted with the Gospel of the
uncircumcision, even as Peter with the
Gospel of the circumcision,” in that
memorable interview, when the older
apostles gave Barnabas and Paul the
right hand of fellowship. St. Paul
proved to them that his call and
preparation had been as intimate as theirs.
Christ, Who “had wrought for Peter
unto the apostleship of the
circumcision,” had “wrought for Paul
unto the Gentiles,” [215] and they had
seen that it was so. And as his
preparation had been the same, so the
“call” had come to him directly, as
distinctively, and as immediately from
God, as it had come to the Twelve,
[216] and his vision of the Risen Saviour
had been as evident. [217]
These two uses of the term apostle,
the wider and the narrower, continued
beyond the apostolic age. We can see
this in the Didache, which carries the
reference to the narrower circle in
its title, [218] while in its
description of the wandering
“apostles” it paints the itinerant missionaries
to whom the term belonged in its
widest extent. We can also see it in the
difficulties which the early fathers
had to determine what was the number of
the apostles, and who were to be
included within it. [219]
The unique position occupied by the
“Eleven” and by St. Paul was personal to
themselves; it was based on a unique
and immediate experience; no succession
could come from it. But apostles, in
the wider sense of the term, have
always existed in the Church of
Christ, and are with us still in the
missioners and missionaries of the
various branches of the Christian Church.
In lands where the language of the New
Testament is still spoken. the name
as well as the thing survives; the
missionaries and missioners of the modern
Greek Church are still called “holy
apostles.” [220]
It was the apostolate in its widest
extent that was a part of the “prophetic
ministry” of the primitive Church.
When we think of apostles as part of the
triad of “apostles, prophets and
teachers,” we must have in mind, not twelve
or thirteen, but large numbers who
were missionaries in the Church, and took
the first rank in the prophetic
ministry because their duty was to extend
the boundaries of the Church of
Christ. They all belonged to the class of
those “gifted” to “speak the Word of
God,” men who were to be tested by the
discriminating “gift,” but who, when
received, were to be honoured and their
word obeyed. The spiritual “gift”
which they possessed was a personal and
not an official thing; and in one
sense they were all on the same level, for
they had all the same “ gift.” But
they differed in natural endowments, and
the spiritual gift had been bestowed
in larger measure on some than on
others. Some could, and did, fill a
large sphere and wield an enormous
influence; others had to content
themselves with a much inferior position;
but whether their sphere was large or
small they had the same work to do.
They were the pioneers of primitive
Christianity. They cannot be compared
with the officials of a long
established church. The only safe comparison is
with the missionary of modern times,
and their work has the curious double
action which must characterize pioneer
Christian work in all places and at
all times.
They had to teach Christian morality
to converts ignorant of its first
principles, and this could only be
done when stern command mingled with
sweet persuasiveness. They had to deal
with people who could but awkwardly
apply the moral principles they had
been taught, and had to select typical
cases, and to point out how they must
be decided. On the one side their
action must appear to be highly
autocratic; on the other their influence was
entirely personal, and their only
means of enforcing their decisions was by
persuasion.
They had to show their converts not
merely how to live lives worthy of their
new profession; they required to train
them in the art of living together in
Christian society, and they had to do
it in such a way as to foster social
as well as individual responsibility.
So on the one hand they can be
represented as shaping constitutions,
selecting and appointing
office-bearers, and generally
controlling in autocratic fashion the
communities their teaching had
gathered together; and on the other hand this
very work can be truly described as
the almost independent effort of the
communities themselves. [221] For it
is the missionary’s business, and often
the hardest part of it, to create the
feelings of corporate responsibility
and independent action. His work is
that of a parent training his children,
and dependent on natural relationship
and personal character for the
obedience he demanded, not that of an
ecclesiastical superior with official
rights to support his
injunctions.
If this double characteristic inherent
in all missionary work be forgotten,
it is possible to take the most
opposite views of apostolic methods and of
the rights which an apostle claimed to
have and to exercise. [222] Men, like
Sohm, who dwells upon the power to
command inherent in the possession of the
“gift” of speaking the Word of God,
search for, find and point to St.
Paul’s interference in the details of
the life of his communities. While
others, like Loening, who see the
plain evidences of the independence and
self-government in these same
communities, insist that the apostle’s whole
relation to his converts was purely
ethical, and had nothing to do with
organization and its working. Six
months spent in watching a missionary at
work would have taught them how to
combine their views.
No apostle stands forth so clearly
before later generations as does St.
Paul. His letters reveal the man, his
modes of work, the authority he
possessed and the way in which he used
it. We may take him as the highest
type of the first, order of the
prophetic ministry. His duties and the
authority which lay behind them were
what belonged to the planting of
Christianity.
His claims to authority rested upon a
double basis. He had received words,
sayings and commandments of Jesus
which he could hand on to his converts and
which were the “traditions” which he
asked them to hold fast; [223] and
being filled with “the Spirit of God,”
i.e., one of those who were
“gifted,” to “speak the Word of God,”
he could give the authoritative
interpretation of these commands, and
could show the true application of the
principles of Christian morality.
[224] He might have demanded to be
honoured for these possessions and
“gifts,” [225] but he preferred to rest
his claims to the obedience,
reverence, and affection of his converts on the
personal relation which had grown up
between them and himself. [226]
He was the first who had made the
Gospel known to them, and their faith in
the Lord was of itself witness to his
power over them and to his claims upon
them; and this intimate personal
relation between teacher and pupil, between
preacher and convert, between guide
and follower on the pathway heavenward,
ought to beget on their part
gratitude, affection, trust and imitation.
[227] He was their spiritual father,
and he could claim the affectionate
obedience due to a parent, while as a
father he had the right both to praise
and to blame, and that with severity.
[228]
St. Paul never forgot that he was
doing the work of a pioneer, and that his
work was but half done if his
communities of converts remained in a state of
pupilage. He was therefore careful to
cultivate their sense of personal and
corporate responsibility. While he was
ready to answer any questions about
difficulties [229] which had arisen in
the communities, he was very careful
to make suggestions only, and to leave
the full responsibility for the
decisions to come on the shoulders of
the society. Even in the case of the
gross sin of incest “the condemnation
he pronounces is not from a distance
or in his own name only; he twice
represents himself as present, present in
spirit, in an assembly where the
Corinthians and his spirit are gathered
together with the power of our Lord
Jesus. That is, while he is peremptory
that the incestuous person shall be
excluded from the community, he is
equally determined that the act shall
be their own act, and not a mere
compliance with a command of his.”
[230]
It is not to be supposed that all the
numerous apostles of the primitive
Church were men like St. Paul; his
natural endowments and the large “gift”
of the Spirit he possessed give him a
place by himself. Yet, the due
deductions made, we can see in him the
type of these unknown men who were
the pioneers of Christianity in the
first century; men who carried the
Gospel to Antioch, who sowed its seeds
in imperial Rome, who made hundreds
of little barren spots the gardens of
the Lord. They went first; the
prophets and the teachers followed in
their steps.
2. While the apostle was the
missionary of the primitive Church, the prophet
[231] found his work within the
Christian communities which had been created
by the energy of the apostles.
Prophecy was the universal and inseparable
accompaniment of primitive
Christianity and one of its most distinctive
features. Wherever the Spirit of Jesus
had laid hold on men, and believers
were gathered into societies, there
appeared among them some who believed
themselves to be specially filled with
the Spirit of the Master, and able to
speak His Word as He wished it to be
spoken. When such an one addressed
them, his fellow Christians seemed to
hear the Lord Himself speaking:
“for,” they said, “where that which
pertaineth to the Lord is spoken, there
the Lord is.” [232]
Prophecy had its home in Palestine;
the ancient prophets, with the “Word of
Jehovah” on their lips, were the
spiritual guides in Israel of old. It had
been silent for generations, but its
reappearance was expected and longed
for by pious Israelites as a sign of
the nearness of the Messianic time.
They looked for the return of Elijah
or Jeremiah or another of the prophets;
[233] and the apostles could appeal to
the prophecies of Joel to explain the
outpouring of the Spirit and its universal
diffusion en the day of
Pentecost. [234] Our Lord too had led
His followers to expect a revival of
prophecy. He had said that He would
send prophets; had foretold that
unbelievers would maltreat them when
they appeared; [235] and had promised a
prophet’s reward to those who received
His prophets.
We need not wonder then that Christian
prophets arose in the Jewish
Christian Church, and were to be found
there from the very beginning; but
what is to be remarked is that
prophecy was not confined to the Jewish
Church. It appeared spontaneously
wherever the Christian faith spread. We
find prophets in the churches of
Jerusalem and Caesarea among purely
Christian Jewish communities; [236] at
Antioch where Jews and Gentiles
mingled in Christian fellowship; [237]
and everywhere throughout the Gentile
churches—in Rome, in Corinth, in
Thessalonica, and in the Galatian Church.
[238] Prophets are mentioned by name
in the New Testament writings—Agabus,
[239] Barnabas, Saul, Symeon Niger,
Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, [240] Judas
and Silas. [241] Women prophesied,
among them the four daughters of Philip.
[242] Prophecy, with prophets and
prophetesses, appears in almost
uninterrupted succession from the very
earliest times down to the close of
the second century, and indeed much
longer, although it did not retain its
old position. From the beginning too
we find the true prophet confronted by
the false, who preached a strange
Christ, and attempted to turn believers
away from the faith.
The primitive Church had its birth at
a time when the old religions, whether
Jewish or Pagan, had lost their power;
when the old religious formulae no
longer appealed to the hearts and
consciences of men; when an immediate
revelation of the mind of the Master
was the one pressing religious need for
which all craved. Prophecy gave this
to the young Christian communities. The
effect of the presence of these
inspired men, who spoke soberly enough at
times, and often burst forth into
raptures and recited the visions they had
received, can scarcely be overrated.
They confirmed the weak, they
admonished the lax, they edified the
whole society.
The word “prophet,” like the term
“apostle,” was used in a wider and in a
narrower sense. In its widest meaning
it could be, and it was, applied to
all the three classes who were
“gifted” to “speak the Word of God.” St. Paul
himself was called a prophet long
after he had begun his apostolic mission.
[243] He had the peculiar prophetic
gift of speaking in visions and
“revelations.” [244] The “teachers”
also had something in common with the
“prophets.” [245] In this wider use
the whole Church was said to be composed
of “saints and prophets,” [246] and
the prophets when present, assumed the
lead in the local churches
(hēgoumenoi). [247]
In the narrower sense of the term
prophecy had its distinct sphere between
apostleship and teaching. St. Paul,
following his Master, places it second
in his list of the “gifts” which God
has bestowed on His Church. [248] It
had its place within the congregation,
and was part of the preaching
ministry of the apostolic Church. In
the picture St. Paul gives us of the
meeting for edification, prophecy in
the order of service [249] comes
between the part devoted to
instruction and “speaking in a tongue.” St.
Paul’s statements lead us to believe
that the prophetic “gift” was not
confined to a favoured few. He
expected that it should manifest itself in
every community of Christians. He
desired that every member of the
Corinthian Church should possess it,
and that all should strive to cultivate
it. [250] The Christians in
Thessalonica were exhorted to cherish
“prophesyings,” [251] and the brethren
in Rome to make full use of the
“gift.” [252] If he criticised the
action of prophets at Corinth it was for
the purpose of teaching them how to
make the best of the “gift” which had
been entrusted to them for the
edification of their brethren. [253]
What then was prophecy? The new
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the new
way of approach to the Infinite Father
manifested in the appearance of the
Son, had created for the primitive
Christians a new life and had illumined
them with a new light. It gave them a
new insight into the relations between
God and man, and a fresh manifestation
of the bonds uniting our Father in
Heaven with His children on earth. It
made them see with new vividness the
way of God’s salvation and the duties
which God required of man. There arose
in the midst of the primitive
Christian societies men specially filled with
all this wealth of insight, and
inspired or “gifted” to disclose to their
fellows the divine counsels and the
hidden mysteries of the faith. These
were the prophets.
They were teachers. A large part of
what they uttered was instruction, but
their peculiar “gift” was distinct
from that of the teacher. He had to make
known the new facts and events which
the Gospel had disclosed; he had to
trace the connexion between these
divine events, and to explain the
rationale of the divine forces at work
for man’s salvation. He had to show
the bearings of these divine facts and
forces upon beliefs and ways of
living. The distinctively prophetic
task was different. The prophet was a
producer, not an expounder simply, not
a man whose task was finished when he
had taught others to assimilate the
divine knowledge which lay at their
disposal. The prophet added something
more. He was a revealer bringing forth
something new. For prophecy
presupposed revelation; it rested upon it; and
apart from revelation it did not
exist. [254] The prophet was a man of
spiritual insight and magnetic speech.
What he uttered came to him as an
intuition of the Spirit, as if he had
heard a voice or seen a sight.
This does not mean that the prophet
spoke in a state of ecstasy or amentia.
St. Paul’s suggestions in 1 Cor. xiv.
29-33 imply that the prophet retained
his consciousness throughout and had
the power to control himself. The
apostle counselled that whatever
number of revelations had been received,
not more than two or three should be
uttered during one meeting, and that if
a brother received a revelation while
another was speaking the speaker
should give way. Prophecy might be
ecstatic, and we have evidence that it
frequently was, but it was not so
necessarily. Non-ecstatic prophecy lasted
in the Church for two centuries, and
can be shown to have existed among the
Montanists, notwithstanding the
accusations of their opponents. [255]
Prophecy might be based on “visions.”
St. Paul appeals to his own visions as
well as to his “revelations.” [256]
The Apocalypse, which is the great
prophetic book of the New Testament
and the most conspicuous relic we have
of the prophecy of the primitive
Christian Church, is a series of visions
seen by a prophet and related by him.
[257] Sub-apostolic prophecy had its
“visions” also. The Pastor of Hermas,
a Roman presbyter or elder who was a
prophet, is largely composed of
“visions.” [258] But “visions” were not
essential to prophecy, nor do they
seem to have been its common
accompaniment. All inspired
witness-bearing was prophecy, and we may almost
say that free, spontaneous discourse
about spiritual things was its
essential characteristic. We learn,
for example, from the Didache that,
while a definite form of words was
prescribed for the celebration of the
Eucharist, the prophets were not bound
to use it. They were to be allowed to
“give thanks as much as they will.”
[259] At the same time it must be
remembered that the prophets were
always believed to speak in a very special
fashion in the name of God and with His
authority. When the prophet spoke
God was present, and the prophet was
to be listened to as the messenger of
God. [260]
There is nothing in the whole series
of descriptions of prophecy which have
come down to us from apostolic and
from sub-apostolic times to suggest that
the prophets held any office, or that
they were the recognized heads of
local churches. Office-bearers,
indeed, might be prophets; for the “gift”
might come to anyone, and St. Paul
desired that it should be the possession
of every member of the Corinthian
Church. Office neither brought it nor
excluded it; a prophet was a gift of
God to the whole Church, and no
community could make exclusive claim
to him.
Nevertheless prophets had an important
influence within the local churches
of primitive times. We can see this
from the Epistles of St. Paul and, from
sub-apostolic literature, we can
discern that their influence grew rather
than diminished during the first
decades of the second century. This power
seems to have been exercised more
particularly in the two matters of
discipline and absolution or
restoration to membership after gross cases of
sin. St. Paul does not lend his
sanction to any such special powers of
interference. When he speaks of
excommunication or of restoration he
addresses himself to the whole
Christian community, in whose hands he takes
for granted that these duties rest.
[261] But in writing to the Galatian
church about dealing with sinners he
uses the words, “Ye that are
spiritual” (pneumatikoi). [262] This
term “spiritual man” or pneumatikos
came to be used, in a fashion quite
different from St. Paul’s use, almost
exclusively of the prophets; [263] and
the phrase of the apostle must have
had some effect in leading primitive
Christians to believe that the prophets
were the persons to deal with these
matters. The primitive Church early
adopted the idea that certain sins, of
which varying lists are given, were
of such a grievous kind that the sinner
could not be received back again
into the Christian society. They did
not hold that these sins were beyond
the mercy of God; but they did think
that, without the direct voice of God
commanding them, it was not permitted
to them to restore such sinners to the
communion of the Christian society.
The voice of God they believed that they
could hear in the judgment of the
prophet; and the prophets could declare
the forgiveness which the community
felt to be beyond its power. Tertullian,
who represents the older view, expresses this very strongly. [264] It
was
also believed that God dwelt in the
martyrs as He did in the prophets, and
that confessors and martyrs had the
right to declare whether sinners ought
to be absolved and restored. [265]
There are evidences also that the
prophets had a large share in
declaring who were to be chosen to fill the
posts of office-bearers in the local
churches. All these things go to show,
that if the statement that the
prophets exercised a “despotism” [266] over
the primitive Christian churches is
too strong, they did possess very great
authority—the authority which belongs
to one who is believed to utter the
Word of God.
The prophets who are referred to in
St. Paul’s epistles seem to have been
members of the communities which they
edified with their “gift” of
exhortation and admonition, and this
was no doubt the case with the largest
number of these gifted men. But many
who had the “gift” in a pre-eminent way
took to wandering from one local
church to another, in order to awaken
Christian life and service in newly
planted congregations; and the wandering
habit easily grew when the services of
the travelling prophets proved
welcome to the infant communities.
This custom was foreshadowed by our Lord
Himself when He promised a prophet’s
reward to those who received His
prophets, [267] and it evidently
existed from the earliest times. Agabus
wandered from church to church; we
hear of his being at Jerusalem, Antioch
and Caesarea. [268] Such wandering
prophets might easily become apostles,
and we can see an example of this
change of work when Barnabas, who did a
prophet’s work in Antioch, was, at the
call of the Spirit, sent, along with
Saul, to undertake the work of an
apostle or missionary in Cyprus,
Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia. When
these wandering prophets settled down
for a time with their families, [269]
in any Christian community, far from
home and employment, it was but right
that the community they benefited by
their labours should support them. St.
Paul had laid down the principle that
it was a commandment of the Lord’s
that “they which proclaim the gospel
should live of the gospel,” [270] and
had said to the Galatian Christians,
“let him that is taught in the word
communicate to him that teacheth in all
good things.” [271] Primitive
Christians had also the Lord’s promise made to
those who received His prophets. [272]
Hence the Christian communities made
regulations for the support of the wandering prophets who gave them
that
exhortation and admonition which were
the things chiefly sought in the
meeting for edification. The prophets
were to have the first-fruits of wine
and oil, of corn and bread, of oxen
and sheep, of clothing and of money.
[273] The local churches supported the
wandering prophets while they settled
among them. In return the prophets
exhorted in the meetings for edification
and presided at the meetings for
thanksgiving. [274]
The conception that a prophet was
inspired to speak the Word of God invested
him with such a sacred authority that
his position would have been
completely autocratic had it not been
under some controlling power. This
power of control lay in the fact that
every prophet required the permission
or authorisation of the congregation
in order to exercise his “gift” among
them. This authorisation followed the
testing or the recognition whether the
supposed prophet had or had not the true
spirit of Jesus. The power of
testing lay in the witness of the
Spirit, which was living in every
Christian and in every Christian
community. For, as has been before
remarked, the prophetic ministry
rested on a double “gift,” or charisma;
one, the “gift” of speaking the Word,
in the prophet, and the other, in the
members of the Christian community,
the “gift” of discernment. [275] The
possession and use of this “gift” of
testing preserved the freedom and
autonomy of the local Christian
churches in presence of men who were
persuaded that they spoke in the name
of God. Every prophet had to submit to
be tested before he was received as
one worthy to exhort the brotherhood;
and his decisions or admonitions on
points of discipline or absolution had
to be approved by the congregation ere
they were enforced. The right and the
duty of Christian communities to test
every one who came with a prophetic
message was urged repeatedly by St.
Paul and in other New Testament
writings. The apostle insisted that
all prophets, apostles, and even
himself, ought to be tested by all
Christians to whom they presented
themselves. He appealed to their power
of judging his own message. [276] The
power to discriminate between the true
and the false spiritual gifts was a
special charisma which ought to be
used. [277] The Lord had warned His
followers against “ false “ prophets,
and had predicted that they would
bring evil upon His Church; [278] and
St. Paul, after telling the
Thessalonians to cherish prophesyings, insists on their using their
power of
discrimination. The same command is
given in 1 John iv. 1. [279] The Church
of Ephesus was praised for trying and
rejecting men who called themselves
apostles and were not. [280] The
Churches of Smyrna and Thyatira were blamed
for the untested and unrejected
teaching which they had permitted. [281]
There was need for testing, for if the
genuine Old Testament prophecy was
confronted with “gilds” of diviners
and soothsayers belonging to the old
Semitic naturalist religions, as well
as with colleges of Jewish prophets
who had retained the external
prophetic characteristics, but had lost the
true spirit of Jehovah, [282] the
prophets of Jesus also had their rivals
and their innocent or designing
imitators. In that age of crumbling faiths
in the Graeco-Roman world, Eastern
religions were entering to possess the
land. The great imperial system of
roads and sea-routes served other
purposes besides the traffic of trade,
the convoy of troops, or the ordinary
coming and going of the population.
Bands of itinerant devotees, the
professional prophets and priests of
Syrian. Persian, and perhaps of Indian
cults, passed along the high-roads.
Solitary preachers of oriental faiths,
with all the fire of missionary zeal,
tramped from town to town, drawn by an
irresistible impulse towards Rome, the
centre of civilization. the
protectress of the religions of her
myriads of subject peoples, the tribune
from which, if a speaker could only
once ascend it, he might address the
world. It was the age of wandering
preachers and teachers, of religious
excitements, of curiosity about new
faiths, [283] when all who had something
new to teach hawked their theories as
traders dragged about and exposed
their merchandise. We need not suppose
that these men were all charlatans or
self-conscious impostors. We must not
thrust aside carelessly and without
question the claims made by the
prophets and preachers of many of these
Eastern faiths to the possession of a
knowledge of hidden powers and
processes of nature, and of a command
over them. Above all, we must not
forget the strange assimilative
character of so many Oriental faiths, which
was as strong in Syria and Asia Minor
in the early centuries as it is in
India now. Christianity attracted men
then as now; they were curious about
it; they seized on sides of the new
religion which they could best
appreciate, and could so present their
beliefs as to be able to plead that
they themselves were Christians of a
more sympathetic character and with a
wider outlook than others. The great
cities which were the centres of trade
and commerce—the ganglia of the great
empire, as the roads were its
nerve-system—Ephesus, Corinth,
Thessalonica, Rome, where we find the
Christian prophets most active within
the Gentile Christian Church, were the
very places where this pagan Oriental
prophecy most abounded. Nothing
hindered the presence of such men at
the meetings for edification; nothing
prevented them from claiming to speak
in the Spirit; only the diakrisis
lying in the Christian society, only
the power of discernment and testing
through that “gift” of spiritual insight
which was in every true Christian,
and therefore in the Christian
community, prevented the claims of such men
to be inspired guides being
admitted.
The testing was for the purpose of
finding whether the prophetic “gift” was
genuine or not. It had little or
nothing to do with the external appearance
of the prophet or with the kind of
utterance which he selected to convey his
message. The question was: Were the
contents of the prophetic message such
as would come from the spirit of
Jesus? had it the self-evidencing ring
about it? had it the true ethical
meaning which must be in a message from
the Master?—something which
distinguished it from everything heathenish or
Jewish, something which showed that
the prophet had drunk deeply at the well
of Christ?
The test that St. Paul gives: “no man
speaking in the Spirit of God saith,
Jesus is anathema; and no man can say
that Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy
Spirit” [284] may seem inadequate and
easily eluded; but St. Paul is not
delivering a short verbal creed; he is
setting forth a principle. Prophecy
must be filled with the sense of the
Lordship of Jesus over the believer’s
heart, soul and life, if it is true
prophecy. [285] In the later days of the
Didache the need for testing was felt
as strongly, if not more so; the
tests, however, took a much more
mechanical aspect. The fine spiritual sense
which the apostle trusted to has gone
into the background and some wooden
maxims have taken its place. “Not
every one that speaketh in the spirit,”
says the Didache warningly, “is a
prophet, but only if he have the ways of
the Lord.” [286] The phrase “ways of
the Lord” does not, taken by itself,
suggest anything mechanical, and has a
flavour of the old spirituality. But
the subordinate tests appear to
indicate a degeneracy both in the prophetic
office and in the spiritual
discernment of the people. For the prophetic
office and its discrimination demanded
a somewhat high tone of spiritual
life, and might very easily
deteriorate. In this, as in other things, there
is a close parallel to be drawn
between the prophets of the New and of the
Old Testament.
3. The third class of persons who
belonged to this prophetic ministry were
the teachers (didaskaloi).
We can trace their presence along with
that of the apostles and the prophets
in the promise of Jesus, in the most
conspicuous of the “gifts” of His
Spirit to the apostolic church, in the
records of the sub-apostolic period.
Our Lord promised to send “wise men
and scribes”—a “gift” to be recognized
and appreciated by His followers, and
rejected with hatred by those who
refused His salvation. [287] St. Paul
emphasized their presence, when he
said that God had set in the Church
“thirdly teachers.” [288] We find them
mentioned throughout the apostolic and
sub-apostolic periods, holding an
honoured place in the infant Christian
communities.
They were not office-bearers
necessarily, though there was nothing to
prevent their being chosen to office.
What made them “teachers” was neither
selection by their brethren nor any
ceremony of setting apart to perform
work which the Church required to be
done. They were “teachers” because they
had in a personal way received from
the Spirit the “gift” of knowledge,
which fitted them to instruct their
fellow believers. Their more public
sphere of work was in the meeting for
edification, where, according to St.
Paul, they had a definite place
assigned to them after the praise and before
the prophesyings; [289] but it may be
inferred that their work was not
limited to public exhortation, and
that they devoted time and pains to the
instruction of catechumens and others
who wished to be more thoroughly
grounded in the principles of
Christian faith and life. [290] St. Paul gives
us some indications of the work of the
“teacher.” The apostle always brought
to the communities he had founded what
may be called the “oral Gospel” of
the Lord Jesus or the saving deeds of
the Evangelical history, and certain
institutions and commandments of the
Master. [291] These were the things
which he “had received,” and which he
“handed over” to his converts to be
stored up in the retentive Oriental
memory uncorrupted by reading and
writing. He had added others—hidden
things revealed to him because he was a
prophet—which he called “mysteries,”
about the Resurrection or the
universality of the Gospel. [292]
These things he had handed over to them
either “by word or by epistle.” [293]
To these he had added suggestions and
opinions of his own. [294] All these
things formed the stock of material on
which the “gift” of the teacher
enabled him to work for the edification of
the community. St. Paul’s own
discourses furnished the teachers in his
communities with examples of the way
in which all these stores of
communicated knowledge could be
brought to bear upon the faith, life and
morals of the members of the local
churches. He had given them a “pattern of
teaching” [295] which they could
strive to imitate, and which they without
doubt did copy in their public
exhortations or private instructions and
admonitions.
From St. Paul’s epistles it would
appear that the apostle expected that
every Christian community would
furnish from its own membership, the
teachers required to instruct the
members; [296] but it is evident, at least
when we get beyond the apostolic
period, that many gifted men, whose
services were appreciated, went from
church to church teaching and
preaching, and that without having any
pretension to the prophetic gift.
Justin Martyr and Tatian, well-known
apologists of the second century, were
wandering teachers of this kind.
Such a wandering master, we learn from
the Didache, belonged to the class of
“honoured” persons (tetimēmenoi),
and at once attained a leading position in
the community he entered or to which
he belonged. He had to submit to the
same tests as the prophet, but like
him, when once received, he was honoured
as one who spoke the “Word of God.”
[297]
A position such as this, carrying with
it both privilege and support, would
be sought after by those who thought
more of the honourable position in
which the teacher stood than of the
serious responsibilities which his
office involved, and there are
warnings both in apostolic and sub-apostolic
literature that the work of a teacher
is not to be lightly undertaken. [298]
It is perhaps worthy of remark that
the “teachers” seem to have maintained
their position as a distinct class of
men, apart from the office-bearers of
a local church, much longer than the
prophets did. In the general overthrow
of the prophetic “ministry” during the
second century the office of
“teacher” was absorbed by the local
ministry; but “teachers” apart from
office-bearers seem to have maintained
themselves in the Church for some
centuries, [299] and some churches,
notably that of Alexandria, seem to have
possessed large numbers of teachers.
[300]
This prophetic ministry and the
peculiar place it occupied was the
distinctive feature of the
organization of the Church of Christ during the
apostolic and sub-apostolic periods.
It gives this age a place by itself,
and separates it from all other
periods of the Church’s history; for it must
be remembered that while this ministry
lasted it dominated and controlled.
Whatever administrative organization
the local churches possessed had to
bend before the authority of the
members of this prophetic circle. To them
belonged the right to lead the
devotions of their brethren—to speak the
“Word of God” in the meeting for
edification, and to preside at the
Eucharistic service—and to influence
in a large but indefinite manner the
whole action of the infant Christian
communities. Yet they were not
office-bearers in any sense of the
word. They were not elected, nor were
they set apart by any ecclesiastical
action to a place of rule. Their
vocation was immediate and personal.
They could be tested, and their
ministry might be accepted or
rejected, but there the power of the Church
with regard to them and to their
ministry came to an end.
They appear on the pages of the
apostolic and sub-apostolic literature in
the three classes which have been
described; but the divisions, we can see,
represented functions, not offices,
nor can it be said that these functions
were separated by any hard and fast
line.
The apostle or wandering missionary
was also a prophet and a teacher; his
vocation required him to be all three.
The prophet might become an apostle,
if he gave himself permanently to the
aggressive creative work which was the
characteristic of the apostolic
activity; and he was also a teacher, for his
prophetic utterances must often have
been teaching of the highest and most
stimulating kind. But a teacher could
fulfil the special work of his
vocation without having the “gift” of
revelation added to that of knowledge.
In all three classes we can discern
the effects of a real outpouring of the
Spirit, imparting special spiritual
gifts, and creating for the service of
the infant Christian communities a
ministry which “spoke the Word of God” in
the same sense as did the prophets of
the Old Testament Dispensation. St.
Paul was a prophet in the same sense
that Isaiah was, and the author of the
Apocalypse had visions as vivid as
those of Ezekiel. [301] The one great
difference between the prophesying of
the two dispensations was that the
gift was much more widely bestowed in
the New than it had been in the Old
Dispensation.
It seems to be impossible to draw any
line of demarcation between the
prophecy of the Old and that of the
New Testament, except that the latter
partook of the universalist character
of the new revelation of the Kingdom
which our Lord proclaimed, and the
“gift” was imparted to Gentiles as well
as to Jews. The same outstanding
features characterized the prophets and
prophecy in the two dispensations. In
both cases the prophetic “call” came
to the prophet personally and
immediately in a unique experience; and when
the “call” came everything else had to
be set aside, and the “word” from God
had to be spoken. It is possible to
compare narrowly St. Paul and Isaiah,
St. John and Ezekiel, Polycarp and
Jeremiah. In neither case was the
prophetic “call” a call to office in
the Church. The New Testament prophets
were no more presbyters or bishops in
virtue of their “call” than were the
Old Testament prophets elevated to the
priesthood in Israel; and in both
cases the regular office-bearers had
to give way to and bow before the men
through whom the Spirit of God
spoke.
In Old Testament prophecy, as in the
prophecy of the New Testament, the
Spirit of God was given in a larger
measure to some men and in a smaller
degree to others, and in each case the
natural faculties of the prophet had
full play to exert themselves
according to the capacities of the man. There
were gradations in the prophetic order
from men like St. Paul and Isaiah,
who stood in the foremost rank, to the
nameless prophet whom the lion slew,
or the impetuous prophet who
interrupted his brother in the meeting of the
Corinthian congregation.
In both cases true prophecy was
surrounded with a fringe of prophet life
which was hostile, and which was
inspired by a spirit at variance with the
purposes of Jehovah and with the
principles of Jesus. In the Old Testament,
as in the New, there was a marked
tendency towards deterioration within the
prophetic order.
In both cases the power to
discriminate between the true and the false
prophecy, between the man who spoke
full of the Spirit of God and the member
of the prophetic “gild,” was left to
the spiritual discernment of the people
spoken to. The discerning faculty was
often at fault; pretenders were
received by and misled the faithful.
Jeremiah had to protest against the way
in which the people received men who
claimed to be prophets, and Origen had
to repudiate the prophets, or their
caricatures, whom Celsus described with
graphic irony. [302] Yet this power of
spiritual insight was the only
touchstone, and, indeed, there could
have been no other in the last resort.
For men can never get rid of their
personal responsibility in spiritual
things.
_________________________________________________________________
[167] This is equally true of the
whole Church of Christ throughout the
whole world: for each local church is
the Church in miniature. The relation
of the prophetic ministry to the whole
Church on the one hand and to the
local church on the other is an
instructive illustration of the visibility
of the Church Universal in every
Christian community.
[168] 1 Cor. iii. 1; cf. Gal. vi. 1,
and 1 Cor. ii. 15.
[169] Compare the tetimēmenoi of
the Didache (iv. 1; xv. 2) and 1 Tim. v.
17: “ohi kalōs proestōtes
presbuteroi diplēs timēs axiousthōsan, malista hoi
kopiōntes en logō kai
didaskalia.”
[170] Rom. xii. 7: “eíte
diakonian, en tē diakonia,” is any kind of service
in the Christian community.
[171] “Helps” (antilēpseis) and
“wise counsels” (kubernēseis) are placed in
the same list of “gifts” with
apostles, prophets, teachers and those who
have powers of healing. The ministry
of the local church, which is the
foundation whence has come the present
ministry in the Church in all its
branches, was as much founded on the
“gifts” of the Spirit as was the
ministry of the Word. Sohm appears to
ignore this in his otherwise admirable
discussion of the “Lehrgabe”
(Kirchenrecht, i. 28 ff.); and Harnack does not
have it always before him, as it ought
to be, in the dissertations appended
to his epoch-making edition of the
Didache (Texte u. Untersuchungen, II.
ii.).
[172] 1 Cor. ii. 14.
[173] The prophets who speak the “Word
of God” are told to prophesy
according to the measure of the faith
that is in them: kata tēn analogian
tēs pisteōs (Rom. xii. 6);
and the hearers are told to test the speakers (1
Cor. xii. 10, compare vv. 1, 4; 1
Thess. v. 21; cf. 1 Cor. x. 15; xi. 13);
and in 1 John iv. 1-3 it is said,
“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but
test the spirits whether they be of
God,” etc. This charisma of discernment
lay at the basis of the “call” given
by the congregation to men to be their
office-bearers: compare Canons of
Hippolytus, ii. 7-9 (Texte und
Untersuchungen, VI. iv. pp. 39, 40);
and its use showed that the spiritual
“gift” which belonged to the whole
community was higher than the gift “
possessed by an individual prophet
inasmuch as it was the judge of that
gift.” Compare Sohm, Kirchenrecht
(1892), i. 56 ff., whose remarks, however
valuable, seem too doctrinaire.
[174] “Ut hanc fidem consequamur,
institutum est ministerium docendi
Evangelii et porrigendi Sacramenta”
(Augsburg Confession, Pt. I. art. v.);
“Nam sicuti Deus solus de se idoneus
est testis in suo sermone; ita etiam
non ante fidem reperiet sermo in
hominum cordibus, quam interiore Spiritus
testimonio obsignetur” (Calvin,
Instit. I. vii. 4). “Our full persuasion and
assurance of the infallible truth and
divine authority thereof is from the
inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing
witness by and with the Word in our
hearts” (West. Conf. i. 5).
[175] Heb. xiii. 7: Didache iv. 1: “My
child, him that speaketh to thee the
Word of God thou shalt have in
remembrance day and night, and honour him as
the Lord: for, where that which
pertaineth to the Lord is spoken, there the
Lord is.”
[176] This statement ought to be
qualified: the local presidents or
proistamenoi of 1 Thess. v. 12 seem to
have had other duties besides merely
to exercise oversight; they had also
to warn and instruct.
[177] Heb. xiii. 7: “Mnēmoneuete
tōn hēgoumenōn humōn, hoitines elalēsan
humin ton logon tou Theou.”
[178] 1 Cor. ix. 13, 14; Gal. vi. 6;
cf. 2 Cor. xi. 8, 9, and Phil. iv. 10
ff. “But every true prophet who will
settle among you is worthy of his
support. Likewise a true teacher, he
also is worthy, like the workman, of
his support. Every first-fruit then,
of the products of the wine-press and
threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep,
thou shalt take and give to the
prophets.” Didache. xiii, 1-3.
Timē has the two meanings of “honour” and
“honorarium,” and it is difficult to
know sometimes how to translate it; a
case in point is 1 Tim. v. 17.
[179] Acts xiii. 1-3.
[180] 1 Cor. xii. 28; Eph. iv.
11.
[181] Hermas, Simil. ix. 15: “The
thirty-five are the prophets of God and
His ministers; and the forty are the
apostles and teachers of the preaching
of the Son of God.”
[182] Homilies, xi. 35: “Wherefore,
above all, remember to shun apostle or
prophet or teacher who does not first
accurately compare his preaching with
that of James, who was called the
brother of my Lord.”
[183] Rev. xviii. 20: “Rejoice over
her, thou heaven, and ye saints and ye
apostles and ye prophets.” Eph. ii.
20: “Being built on the foundation of
the apostles and the prophets.”
Didache, xi.
[184] Didache, xiii. 1, 2; xvi. 2.
Pseudo-Clementines, De Virginitate, i.
11, “Ne multi inter vos sint doctores,
fratres, neque omnes sitis
prophetae”; but this is a quotation,
said to be from Scripture. For fuller
list of authorities compare Harnack,
Texte u. Untersuchungen, II. ii.
93-110, and tabular summary in note
pp. 110-112.
[185] Hermas, Pastor, Vis. iii. 5; 1
Tim. ii. 7; 2 Tim. i. 11.
[186] For the meaning and work of an
apostle: compare Lightfoot, St. Paul’s
Epistle to the Galatians, 7th ed. pp.
92-101; note on The name and office of
an apostle; Harnack, Texte u.
Untersuchungen, II. ii. 111-118; Weizsäcker,
The Apostolic Age (Eng. Transl.), ii.
291-299; Sohm, Kirchenrecht, i. 42-45;
Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des
Urchristenthums, pp. 33-37; Armitage
Robinson, Encyc. Bibl., art. Apostle,
pp. 264-6; Schmiedel, Encyc. Biblic.,
art. Ministry, pp. 3114-3117; Hort, The
Christian Ecclesia, pp. 22-41;
Seufert, Ursprung and Bedeutung des
Apostolats; Gwatkin, art. Apostle,
Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, i.
126.
[187] 1 Cor. xv. 10; Gal. ii. 7,
8.
[188] Rom. xv. 20.
[189] This appears to be the line of
thought in our Lord’s address in the
synagogue at Nazareth. He quoted from
Isaiah lxi. 1, about the one sent from
God, and declared that He was the
“Sent One” (Luke iv. 18, 21); He had come
to deliver a message from the Father
which was to be proclaimed in the
cities of Palestine (Luke iv. 41; cf.
Matt. xv. 24). He made His followers
His representatives in Matt. x. 40-42
(cf. the parallel passages in Mark ix.
37, and Luke ix. 48). The two thoughts
are combined in John xx. 21: “Jesus
therefore said unto them again, Peace
be unto you; as the Father hath sent
Me, even so I send you”; cf. Clement,
Ep. I. xlii. 1, 2; Tertullian, De
Praescriptione, 37. In earlier
classical Greek “apostolos “ meant a
messenger who is also a representative
of the man who sent him; in later
Greek, the Attic use of the word to
mean “a naval expedition, a fleet
dispatched on foreign service,” seems
to have superseded every other. The
word however was used in later Judaism
to mean the messengers sent from
Jerusalem to collect the Temple
tribute from the Jews of the Dispersion and
who were at the same time charged with
the business of carrying letters and
advice from the Jewish leaders in the
capital of Judaism, and of promoting
religious fellowship throughout all
the Jews scattered over the civilized
world. Hence Dr. Lightfoot says, “In
designating His immediate and most
favoured disciples ‘Apostles’ our Lord
was not introducing a new term, but
adopting one which from its current
usage would suggest to His hearers the
idea of a highly responsible mission.”
Commentary on the Epistle to the
Galatians (7th ed.); The name and
office of an Apostle, pp. 93, 94; cf. also
Seufert, Ursprung and Bedeutung des
Apostolats, pp. 8-14. But is is very
doubtful if the word was in use in
Judaism until after the time of our Lord,
and it seems in every way simpler to
believe that the Christian origin and
use of the word were what are given
above.
[190] Matt. xviii. 5.
[191] In Mark iii. 13-16 we are told
that Jesus appointed Twelve, “whom He
also called Apostles” (that is the
reading adopted by Westcott and Hort) for
a double purpose (the two parts of the
purpose being made emphatic by the
repetition of hina), of being in close
companionship with Him, and of
sending them forth to preach and to
cast out demons, This, that they had to
do, was what Jesus Himself had been
doing (Mark i. 39; cf. Mark i. 14-34).
Thus their training was both intimate
companionship and close imitation in
service. The account is confirmed by
Luke vi. 13, where He called the
Twelve; by Luke ix. 2, where He sent
them forth to do and to teach; and by
Luke ix. 10, where we are told that
they did what they had been commanded.
Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, pp.
22-41.
[192] Acts i. 25.
[193] Acts ix. 10 ff.
[194] 2 Cor. xii. 1-4; Gal. i.
15-17.
[195] Clementine Homilies, xvii.
13-20; the quotation is from sect. 19.
[196] 2 Cor. viii. 23: “Our brethren,
the apostles of the churches, the
glory of Christ.”
[197] Acts xiii. 2, 3: “The Holy Ghost
said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul
for the work whereunto I have called
them. Then when they had fasted and
prayed and laid their hands on them,
they sent them away”; xiv. 4: “But the
multitude of the city was divided; and
part held with the Jews and part with
the apostles (Barnabas and Paul)”;
xiv. 14: “But when the apostles, Barnabas
and Saul heard it . . .”; Gal. ii. 9: “They
who were reputed to be pillars
gave to me and to Barnabas the right
hands of fellowship that we should go
unto the Gentiles and they to the
circumcision.” Compare 1 Cor. ix. 5, 6.
[198] Rom. xvi. 7: “Salute Andronicus
and Junias, my kinsmen and my fellow
prisoners, who are of note among the
apostles, who also have been in Christ
before me.” The phrase “of note among
the apostles” has often been
translated “highly esteemed among the
apostles.” Upon this Dr. Lightfoot
remarks: “ Except to escape the
difficulty involved in such an extension of
the apostolate, I do not think the
words hoitines eisin episēmoi en tois
apostolois would have been generally
rendered “who are highly esteemed by
the apostles”; and he goes on to say that
the Greek fathers took the more
natural interpretation and included
Andronicus and Junias among the
apostles. He quotes Origen and
Chrysostom. The latter thought that Junias or
Junia was a woman’s name, and yet he
numbered her among the apostles;
Lightfoot, Commentary on the Epistle
to the Galatians (7th ed.), p. 96 ff.
[199] 1 Thess. i. 1, 6. Dr. Lightfoot
includes Silas among those who are
called apostles by St. Paul, but
refuses to include Timothy: (1) because
Timothy had not seen the Lord, and (2)
because when the apostle mentions
Timothy elsewhere he carefully
excludes him from the apostolate. He writes
in Col. i. 1 and in 2 Cor. i. 1, “Paul
an apostle and Timothy the brother”;
and in Phil. i. 1: “Paul and Timothy
servants of Jesus Christ.” In the
Pastoral Epistles Timothy is described
as an evangelist: “Do the work of an
evangelist; fulfil thy ministry” (2
Tim. iv. 5). It is held by many, among
others by Lightfoot and Sohm, that the
evangelists of 2 Tim. iv. 5, of Eph.
iv. 11, and of Acts xxi. 8 (Philip the
evangelist), were men who did the
work of wandering missionaries but
lacked the indispensable characteristic
(as they think) of an apostle, viz.
having seen the Lord and received a
commission from Him (Luke xxiv. 48;
Acts i. 22; 1 Cor. ix. 1). This
distinction may prove good for the
apostolic period, though it seems
doubtful that it does, but it entirely
falls to the ground in the
immediately succeeding times. I am
inclined to conclude that there is really
no distinction between a wider use of
the term apostle and the evangelist.
The word “evangelist” occurs very
seldom. The three references exhaust the
New Testament uses; it disappears
entirely in the immediately post-apostolic
literature, it is not to be found in
the Apostolic fathers nor in the
Didache. When it reappears, as in
Tertullian, De Praescriptione 4 (Qui
pseudapostoli nisi adulteri
evangelizatores) and in Eusebius (Hist. Eccl.
III. xxxvii. 2, 4) it is used to
describe such men as were called
“apostles” in the Didache. On the
other hand the apostles are described as
“entrusted with the evangel” (Gal. i.
7, 8); as those who “preach the
evangel” (1 Clement, 42); as the
twelve evangelizers (Barnabas, viii. 3).
Light., Com. on the Epistle to the
Galatians (7th ed.), p. 96 n., 97. Sohm,
Kirchenrecht, i. 42 n.; Harnack, Texte
und Unters. II. ii. 113 n., 114;
Sources of the Apostolic Canons (Eng.
Trans.), p. 16, n. 8.
[200] Lightfoot excludes Apollos on
the double ground that it is extremely
unlikely that he had seen the Lord,
and because Clement of Rome, speaking of
Peter, Paul and Apollos, calls the two
former apostoloi memarturēmenoi and
the latter anēr dedokimasmenos (1
Clem. 48).
[201] Phil. ii. 25.
[202] The evidence for including
James, the brother of our Lord among those
called apostles by St. Paul is
contained in 1 Cor. xv. 7: “Then He appeared
to James; then to all the apostles;
and, last of all, as unto one born out
of due time, He appeared to me also”;
in 1 Cor. ix. 5: “Even as the rest of
the apostles, and the brethren of our
Lord, and Cephas”; and Gal. i. 19,
which may read: “But other of the
apostles saw I none, save James the
Lord’s brother,” and would then
include James among the apostles, or: “But I
saw no other apostle, but only James
the Lord’s brother.” which would
exclude James. James is included by
Lightfoot, Sohm, Weizsäcker (Apostolic
Age (Eng. Trans.), ii. 294) and many
others.
[203] The phrase, tōn huperlian
apostolōn is translated in the R. V. “the
chiefest apostles,” which would imply
that the “Twelve” were meant. But this
is impossible. St. Paul would never
have called the “Twelve” “false
apostles, deceitful workers,
fashioning themselves into apostles of
Christ” (2 Cor. xi. 13), as he does
the men mentioned in xi. 5 and xii. 11.
The marginal reading, “those
pre-eminent apostles,” is in every way to be
preferred. Cf. Heinrici’s masterly
exposition, Das Zweite Sendschreiben des
Apostel Paulus an die Korinther, pp.
401-412; also Schmiedel, Encyc. Bibl.
art. Ministry, p. 3114.
[204] Cor. iii. 1.
[205] Matt. xxiv. 11; Mark xiii.
22.
[206] Didache, xi. 4: “Every apostle
who cometh to you let him he received
as the Lord.”
[207] Matt. x. 10; cf. Luke ix. 3;
Mark vi. 8.
[208] Didache, xi. 5, 6: “He shall not
remain except for one day; if
however, there be need, then the next
day; but if he remain three days, he
is a false prophet. But when the
apostle departeth, let him take nothing
except bread enough till he lodge
again; but if he ask for money, he is a
false prophet.”
[209] Dr. Lightfoot has made a list of
what he conceives St. Paul thought
were the indispensable qualifications
for the apostolic office:—the apostle
must have been a witness of the
Resurrection (Acts i. 21-23); and this was
supplied to St. Paul by a miraculous
revelation; a commission received
either directly from our Lord or
through the medium of the Church as was the
case with Matthias (Acts i. 23-26),
and with St. Paul himself, who was not
actually invested with the rank of
apostle till he received it along with
Barnabas at Antioch (Acts xiii. 2);
the conversions which resulted from his
work (1 Cor. ix. 2); possessing the
signs of an apostle, which were partly
moral and spiritual gifts such as
patience, self-denial, effective
preaching, and partly supernatural
“signs, wonders and mighty deeds.” Com.
on the Epistle to the Galatians (7th
ed), pp. 98, 99. Weizsäcker has also
made a collection of the
qualifications of an apostle, but he, rightly
enough, considers that they were the
qualifications demanded from St. Paul
by his enemies, and are therefore what
they declared a true apostle ought to
possess. “According to them the
candidate for the apostolate required above
all to be a Jew by birth (2 Cor. xi.
22). He must have seen Jesus (1 Cor.
ix. 1; cf. 2 Cor. v. 16) and been an
acknowledged promoter of His cause (2
Cor. xi. 23; cf. Acts i. 21). Personal
qualities, like courage (2 Cor. x. 1
ff.) and eloquence seem also to have
been required. On the other hand the
apostle was then expected to attest
himself by certain signs (2 Cor. xii.
12), above all by miraculous powers
and achievements; again by visions and
revelations (2 Cor. xii. 1), and
further, by attacks which could not fail to
be made upon him, and by his bearing
under them (2 Cor. xi. 13 ff.).” He
adds, “All this would have been meaningless,
if only a given number of
definite individuals had been
recognized as apostles.” The Apostolic Age,
ii. 295 (Eng. Trans.).
[210] 2 Cor. iii. 12; x. 1 rf.; xi.
21.
[211] 2 Cor. vii. 5; xii. 10.
[212] 2 Cor. xii. 12.
[213] 1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. iii.
1-3.
[214] Matt. xi. 2-5.
[215] Gal. ii. 7-9.
[216] 1 Cor. i. 1: “Paul called to be
an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the
will of God.” 2 Cor. i. 1. Gal. i. 1:
“Paul, an apostle not from men nor
through man, but through Jesus Christ,
and God the Father.”
[217] 1 Cor. ix. 1; xv. 8.
[218] The full title is Didachē
tōn dōdeka Apostolōn, “The Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles.”
[219] Compare Lightfoot, Commentary on
the Epistle to the Galatians, 99,
100.
[220] Missionaries and missioners in
the Greek Church are called
hierapostoloi. “The delegates of the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s mission to
the Nestorians are regularly called
apostles by the Syrians of Urmi”
(Armitage Robinson, Encyc. Bibl., art.
Apostle, p. 265). So are the priests
who itinerate in the Peloponnesus
preaching to great open air gatherings on
the market-days at such towns as
Tripolitza.
[221] Many of the differences, which
make the Pastoral Epistles so different
from the earlier epistles of St. Paul,
disappear when the character of the
apostle’s work is kept steadily in
view.
[222] Sohm (Kirchenrecht, i. pp. 42-5)
declares that with the “gift” of
“speaking the Word of God” there went
as its accompaniment the “gift” of
spiritual rule, and that all
“apostles, prophets and teachers “ who had the
one were also entrusted with the
other. He shows how the apostles in the
primitive church of Jerusalem led in
all things: in the ministry of the
“Word,” in prayer, in the appointment
of office-bearers (the community
elected but the apostles
appointed—katastēsomen, Acts vi. 3—and presided in
the laying on of hands); and when they
were absent at their missionary work
James took their place. St. Paul
decided for his communities questions of
arrangement, sometimes by quoting a
“word of the Lord,” sometimes by giving
his own opinion (1 Cor. xiv. 37);
decided upon questions of marriage (1 Cor.
vii. 10, 12), of virgin daughters (1
Cor. vii. 25, 40), and generally
declared “how ye ought to walk” (1
Thess. iv. 1). Timothy and Titus, not
because they were the apostle’s
delegates, but because they had the “gift”
of the “Word,” appointed to office
(Titus i. 5; 1 Tim. iii. 1 ff. 8 ff.),
and directed ecclesiastical discipline
(1 Tim. v. 19, 20; Titus iii. 10).
Loening (Die Gemeindeverfassung des
Urchristenthums, pp.34, 35), on the
other hand, thinks that the duties of
an apostle were purely ethical: to
teach believers how they should behave
as Christians, and in particular what
changes they had to make in their
conduct (1 Cor. iv. 16, 17); when the
apostle has a “word of the Lord” then
he commands, but otherwise the apostle
is not master of the faith of his
converts (2 Cor. i. 24), and his
directions are only counsels founded
on his own experience; and it is with
entreaties and persuasion that he asks
the exclusion of a grievous sinner
and the reception again of a repentant
one (1 Cor. v. 3 ff.; 2 Cor. ii. 5
ff.; viii. 11 ff.).
[223] 1 Cor. xi. 2; “Hold fast the
traditions, even as I delivered them to
you.”
[224] The direct command of Jesus St.
Paul calls epitagē, while his own
suggestions receive the name of
sungnōmē or gnōmē; cf. l Cor. vii. 6, 10,
25; these suggestions have a measured
authority for the giver has the Spirit
of God: 1 Cor. vii. 40; xiv. 37.
[225] 1 Thess. ii. 6: “When we might
have claimed honour from you, as
apostles of Christ.”
[226] 1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. iii.
1-3.
[227] Gal. iv. 13 ff.; 1 Cor. iv. 16;
xi. 1; Phil. iii. 17.
[228] Gal. iv. 19. 1 Cor. iv. 14;
18-21; 2 Cor. ii. 9; xiii. 2, 3.
[229] Cor. vii.-x.
[230] Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p.
130; cf. pp. 84-5. For the case
mentioned above, cf. 1 Cor. v. 1-13,
with the conclusion: “Do ye not judge
them that are within, whereas them
that are without God judgeth? Put away
the wicked man from among yourselves.”
For the authority exercised by the
apostles, besides Hort as above,
compare Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age, ii.
297-299; (Eng, Trans.); Schmiedel,
Encyc. Bibl., art. Ministry, pp. 3116,
3117. Gore, The Church and the
Ministry (3rd ed.), pp. 233-238, an account
in which history suffers from being
looked at through the coloured glass of
apostolic succession. Gwatkin, art. Apostle in Hastings’ Bible
Dictionary,
i. 126.
[231] For the Prophetic Ministry
compare: Mosheim, Dissertationes ad
historiam ecclesiasticam pertinentes
(1743), ii. pp. 132-308: De prophetis
ecclesiae apostolicae dissertatio;
Harnack, Encyclopædia Britan. art.
Prophet (New Testament); Texte und
Untersuchungen, II. ii. 119 ff.;
Heinrici, Das erste Sendschreiben des
Apostel Paulus an die Korinther, pp.
347-462; Loening, Die
Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums, pp. 33 ff.;
Robinson, Encyc. Biblica, 3883 ff.;
Gayford, Hastings’ Bible Dictionary;
art. Church, i. 434 ff.; Selwyn,
Christian Prophets (1899); Weinel, Die
Wirkungen des Geistes and der Geister
im nachapostolischen Zeitalter bis
Irenaeus (1899)—an extravagant
book.
[232] Didache, iv. 1.
[233] Matt. xvi. 14; Mark vi. 15;
viii. 28; Luke ix. 8.
[234] Acts ii. 16; cf. Joel ii. 28,
29.
[235] Matt. x. 41; Matt. xxiii. 34;
Luke xi. 49.
[236] Acts xi. 27; xv. 32; xxi. 9,
10.
[237] Acts xi. 27; xiii. 1.
[238] Rom xii. 6, 7; 1 Cor. xiv. 32,
36, 37 ff.; 1 Thess. v. 20; Gal. iii.
3-5.
[239] Acts xi. 28; xxi. 10.
[240] Acts xiii. 1.
[241] Acts xv. 32.
[242] Acts xxi. 9.
[243] Acts xiii. 1. Dr. Lightfoot
seems to think that Saul was only a
prophet until he had received the
“call” from the prophets and teachers at
Antioch. “The actual investiture, the
completion of his call, as may be
gathered from St. Luke’s narrative,
took place some years later at Antioch.
It was then that he, together with
Baranbas, was set apart by the Spirit
acting through the Church, for the
work to which God had destined him, and
for which he had been qualified by the
appearance on the road to
Damascus.” Commentary on the Epistle
to the Galatians (7th ed.), p. 98. But
this surely contradicts St. Paul’s own
statements. He claimed to have been
an apostle from his conversion, in
Acts xxii. 21, and in Acts xxvi. 17.
Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp.
66, 67, answers this curious theory very
thoroughly.
[244] 2 Cor. xii. 1-5.
[245] The “prophet” is continually
called a teacher and said to teach,
Didache, xi. 10; and the woman
Jezebel, who called herself a prophet, is
said to have taught and seduced many
in the church at Thyatira, Rev. ii. 20.
[246] Rev. xi. 18; xvi. 6.
[247] Silas and Judas, who were
prophets in the church at Jerusalem are
called hēgoumenoi there: Acts xv.
22; cf. Heb. xiii. 7 and above p. 73.
[248] 1 Cor. xii. 28.
[249] See above, p. 46.
[250] 1 Cor. xiv. 1, 5, 39.
[251] 1 Thess. v. 20.
[252] Rom. xii. 6.
[253] 1 Cur. xiv. 29-33.
[254] 1 Cor xii. 3; xiv. 6, 26, 30,
32; Matt. xvi. 17.
[255] Cf. Ritschl, Die Enstehung der
altkatholischen Kirche, p, 475.
[256] 2 Cor. xii. 1-5.
[257] Rev. xxii. 9.
[258] Compare the very full account of
Hermas in the Dict. of Chr. Biog. ii.
912-927. It is interesting to notice
how many of the “visions” of the
sub-apostolic prophets were concerned
with some question of Christian life
and practice. Hermas had a vision
about the restoration of repentant sinners
to Church privileges (Vis. iii. 7);
Cyprian had one about the subject which
interested him most—the obedience
which ought to be given to bishops; and
Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. V. iii. 2-3)
relates how while the confessors of Lyons
were in prison, it was revealed to one
of them, Attalus, after his first
conflict in the arena, that his
companion did not act wisely in prison in
keeping to his ascetic living, that he
told his vision to his companion
Alcibiades, who gave heed to him and
left off his ascetic usages, for, it is
added “they were not deprived of the
grace of God, but the Holy Spirit was
their director.”
[259] Didache, x. 7.
[260] 1 Cor. xiv. 25; Gal. iv. 14;
Didache, iv. 1: “My child, remember night
and day him that speaketh to thee the
word of God and honour him as the
Lord; for where that which pertaineth
to the Lord is spoken, there the Lord
is.” Acts xiii. 1, 2: “Now there were
at Antioch, in the church that was
there, prophets . . . and as they
ministered to the Lord and fasted, the
Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas
and Saul . . .”
[261] 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v. 1-8; 2
Cor. ii. 5-8.
[262] Gal. vi. 1: humeis hoi
pneumatikoi katartizete ton toiouton.
[263] Pseudo-Clem., De Virginit. i.
11: “With the gift therefore that thou
hast received from the Lord, serve the
spiritual brethren, the prophets.”
Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V. vi. 1: “In
like manner we do hear of many brethren
in the Church, who possess the
prophetic gifts . . . whom also the apostle
terms ‘spiritual.’”
[264] Tertullian, De Pudicitia, xxi.:
“The Church it is true will forgive
sins; but it will be the Church of the
Spirit, by means of a spiritual man;
not the Church which consists of a
number of bishops. For the right and
judgment is the Lord’s, not His
servant’s; God’s Himself, not the
priest’s.” Hermas, Pastor, Mandata, IV.
iii
[265] Sohm has collected the evidence
for the right assigned to martyrs to
pronounce absolution on the belief
that God was specially present in His
martyr, in his Kirchenrecht, i. 32, n.
9. The office-bearers deprived the
prophets of the right of absolution
and took it upon themselves in the end
of the second and in the beginning of
the third centuries; and Cyprian’s
long struggle with the confessors in
North Africa ended in the overthrow of
all such rights in the hands of any but
the regular office-bearers in the
Church.
[266] Harnack, Theol. Lit. Zeitung,
1889, pp. 420, 421.
[267] Matt. x. 41.
[268] Acts xi. 28; xxi. 10.
[269] 1 Cor. ix. 5.
[270] 1 Cor. ix. 14; Matt. x.
10.
[271] Gal. vi. 6.
[272] Matt. x. 41.
[273] Didache, xiii.: “But every true
prophet who will settle among you is
worthy of his support. Likewise a true
teacher, he also is worthy, like the
workman of his support. Every
first-fruit then of the products of the
wine-press and threshing-floor, of
oxen and of sheep, thou shalt take and
give to the prophets; for they are
your high-priests. But if ye have no
prophet, give it to the poor. If thou
makest a baking of bread, take the
first of it and give according to the
commandment. In like manner also when
thou openest a jar of wine or oil,
take the first of it and give to the
prophets; and of money and clothing
and every possession take the first, as
may seem right to thee, and give
according to the commandment.”
[274] Didache, x. 7. The mode of
conducting the Eucharistic meeting is quite
unknown except the one fact that when
prophets were present they led. It is
easy to conceive a collegiate
superintendence of the meeting for
edification; but it is hardly possible
to think of a collegiate presidency
at the dispensation of the Lord’s
Supper. Did the prophets select one of
their number to preside, or did they
preside in turn? We do not know. Nor
can we get out of this difficulty by
supposing that the Lord’s Supper was
dispensed in the family, when the
father would naturally preside; for St.
Paul's description clearly implies a
common dispensation.
[275] Compare pp. 70-72.
[276] 1 Cor. x. 15; xi. 13; 2 Cor.
xiii. 5, 6; cf. Rev. ii. 2; compare H.
Weinel, Paulus als Kirchlicher
Organisator (1899), pp. 18, 19.
[277] 1 Cor. xii. 10; cf. vv. 1,
4.
[278] Matt. vii. 15; xxiv. 11.
[279] 1 Thess. v. 21; 1 John iv. 1-3;
cf. Didache, x. 1, 2, 11; xiii. 1.
[280] Rev. ii. 2.
[281] Rev. ii. 14, 15, 20.
[282] Deut. xiii. 3; Jer. xxiii.
21-32.
[283] Compare Wissowa, Religion and
Kultus der Römer (1902), pp. 78-83;
Boissier, La Religion Romaine
d’Auguste aux Antonins (1878), i. 354-403.
[284] 1 Cor. xii. 3.
[285] The test given in 1 John iv. 1:
“Beloved, believe not every spirit,
but test the spirits, whether they be
of God; because many false prophets
are gone out into the world. Hereby
know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit
which confesseth that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh is of God; and every
spirit which confesseth not Jesus
(annulleth Jesus) is not of God,” also
looks like a creed; but what follows
makes us see that it is to be taken as
a principle which can be felt and
which means much more than the form of
words in which it is expressed. In
both cases the statement of the test is
immediately followed by an exposition
of the necessity of Christian love
permeating the whole Christian
life.
[286] Didache, xi. 8. The subordinate
tests are: A prophet who orders a meal
in the spirit and eateth it; a prophet
who does not himself practise what he
teaches; a prophet who asks for
money—are all false prophets. But a prophet
who has the “ways of the Lord,” and
who practises more than he preaches is a
true prophet. (Did. xi. 9-12.)
[287] Matt. xxiii. 34: “prophets, wise
men and scribes.” Luke xi. 49:
“prophets and apostles.” Cf. Matt. x.
41.
[288] 1 Cor. xii. 28.
[289] 1 Cor. xiv. 26.
[290] Gal. vi. 6.
[291] We can see from 1 Cor. xv. 1-3,
how St. Paul had made his converts
acquainted with the sufferings, death,
and rising again of our Lord; how he
had enlarged on His character and
ethical qualities (2 Cor. viii. 9; x. 1);
etc., etc. He had taught them the
institutions of Jesus (1 Cor. xi. 23 ff.).
We have references to “commandments”
of the Lord in 1 Cor. vii. 6, 25.
[292] 1 Cor. xv. 51: “Behold I tell
you a mystery: We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump.” 1 Cor. ii. 6 ff. Cf.
xiii. 2; xiv. 2.
[293] 2 Thess. ii. 15.
[294] 1 Cor. vii. 6, 10, 25.
[295] Rom. vi. 17: tupos
didachēs.
[296] Eph. iv. 15, 16.
[297] Didache, xiii. 2; xv. 2.
[298] James iii. 1; Barnabas, Epistle
iv. 9: “Being desirous to write many
things to you, not as your teacher,
but as becometh one who loves you.”
[299] Compare the curious sentence in
the Apostolic Constitutions (VIII.
xxxii.) which can scarcely be earlier
than the beginning of the fifth
century: “Let him that teaches,
although he be one of the laity, yet, if he
be skilful in the word and grave in
his manners, teach;” where the reference
is evidently to the instruction of
catechumens. The teachers of the famous
catechetical school of Alexandria were
laymen during some part of their time
as teachers. The Christian
communities, especially in large towns, must have
needed teachers for Christian schools;
for all teaching within pagan lands
is closely associated with idolatry.
Tertullian (De Idolatria, x.) has
discussed the difficulties of
schoolmasters amidst a pagan populace; the
same difficulties attend native
Christians in India now. When a Marathi boy
first goes to school he is placed upon
a small carpet and a board covered
with red tile dust is placed before
him. The image of Saravasti, the goddess
of learning, is painted on the board.
Then the master sitting beside him
first worships Ganesa and Saravasti,
and teaches the boy to make the letters
which form the name Ganesa. The
difficulties are exactly those which
Tertullian describes.
[300] Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. VII. xxiv.
6: “The presbyters and the teachers
of the brethren in the
villages.”
[301] Compare Plumptre, Theology and Life, p. 90: “Strange as the
thought
may seem to us, there were in that age
(the apostolic) some hundreds it may
be, of men as truly inspired as Isaiah
or Ezekiel had been, as St. Paul or
St. Peter then were, speaking words
which were, as truly as any that were
ever spoken, inspired words of God,
and yet all record of them has
vanished.”
[302] Origen, Contra Celsum, vii. 9:
“Again inasmuch as Celsus announces
that he will describe from personal observation
and an intimate knowledge of
the facts, the manners peculiar to the
prophets of Phenicia and Palestine,
let us consider these statements.
Firstly, he declares that there are
several kinds of prophesyings,
although he gives no list of them . . . .
‘The prophets,’ he says, ‘are many and
unknown persons. They are apparently
and very readily moved to speak as if
in a divine ecstasy without any
special occasion both at the time of
service and at other times. Some go
about as beggars and visit encampments
and towns. Every one of them says
readily and simply: ‘I am God,’ or ‘I
am the Son of God,’ or ‘I am the Holy
Spirit. I have come; for the world is
about to be destroyed; you, O men,
will be lost through your wickedness.
I am willing to save you; and you
shall see me again coming with
heavenly power. Blessed is he who now
worships me. On all others I shall
cast eternal fire, on cities and lands
and on men. Men who do not recognize
their impending judgment will repent
and groan in vain; but those who have
hearkened unto me, I will protect for
ever.’ With these threats they mingle
words, half-frantic, meaningless and
altogether mysterious, whose
significance no sensible man could discover.
For words that are vague and without
meaning give every fool and wizard an
opportunity of giving any particular
meaning they wish on any matter, to
what has been said.” One must remember
that Celsus was what would now be
called a cultured agnostic. His
statements are not unlike some criticisms of
the Salvation Army preachers.
_________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER IV
THE CHURCHES CREATING THEIR
MINISTRY
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. [303] 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. [304] 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. [305] 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. [306] 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 h