4. Donation of Constantine

Notes

1. 653

   It is but right to remark that not merely the negative school of critics, but even many conservative scholars (e.g. Weiss) put the composition of the Gospel of Luke after the year 70, because its eschatological discourses seem to bear the mark of having been recorded after the fulfillment of the prediction, differing as they do in many minor particulars from the accounts of the same discourses in Matthew and Mark. To cite a single instance: in the passage quoted just above from Luke xxi. 20, the armies encompassing Jerusalem are mentioned, while in parallel passages in the other Gospels (Matt. xxiv. 15 and Mark xiii. 14) not armies, but "the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place" is spoken of as the sign. Compare the various commentaries upon these passages.

2. 753

   The same man that is called a bishop just above is here called a presbyter. It is such passages—and they are not uncommon in the early Fathers—that have seemed to many to demonstrate conclusively the original identity of presbyters and bishops, an identity which is maintained by most Presbyterians, and is admitted by many Episcopalians (e.g. by Lightfoot in his essay on the Christian Ministry, printed in his Commentary on Philippians). On the other hand, the passages which reveal a distinction between presbyters and bishops are very early, and are adduced not merely by prelatists, but by such disinterested scholars as Harnack (in his translation of Hatch's Organization of the Early Christian Churches) as proving that there was from the beginning a difference of some sort between a bishop and a presbyter. I cannot enter here into a discussion of the various views in regard to the original relation between bishops and presbyters. I desire simply to suggest a theory of my own, leaving the fuller exposition of it for some future time. My theory is that the word presbuteros was originally employed in the most general sense to indicate any church officer, thus practically equivalent to the hegoumenos of Heb. xiii. 17, and the poimen of Eph. iv. 11. The terms episkopos and di?konos, on the other hand, were employed to designate specific church officers charged with the performance of specific duties. If this were so, we should expect the general term to be used before the particular designations, and this is just what we find in the New Testament. We should expect further that the general term and the specific terms might be used by the same person in the same context, according as he thought of the officers in general or of a particular division of the officers; on the other hand the general term and one of the specific terms could never be coordinated (we could never find "presbyter and bishop," "presbyter and deacon"), but we should expect to find the specific terms thus coordinated ("bishops and deacons"). An examination of the Epistle to the Philippians, of the Pastoral Epistles, of Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians, and of the Didache will show that our expectations are fully realized. This theory explains the fact that so frequently presbyters and bishops seem to be identical (the general and the specific term might of course in many cases be used interchangeably), and also the fact that so frequently they seem to be quite distinct. It explains still further the remarkable fact that while in the first century we never find a distinction in official rank between bishops and presbyters, that distinction appears early in the second. In many churches it must early have become necessary to appoint some of the officers as a special committee to take charge of the economic affairs of the congregation. The members of such a committee might very naturally be given the special name episkopoi (see Hatch's discussion of the use of this word in his work already referred to). In some churches the duties might be of such a character that the bishops would need assistants (to whom it would be natural to give the name di?konos), and such assistants would of course be closely associated with the bishops, as we find them actually associated with them in the second and following centuries (a fact which Hatch has emphasized). Of course where the bishops constituted a special and smaller committee of the general body, entrusted with such important duties, they would naturally acquire especial influence and power, and thus the chairman of the committee—the chairman of the bishops as such, not of the presbyters, though he might be that also—would in time, as a central authority was more and more felt to be necessary, gradually assume the supremacy, retaining his original name episkopos. As the power was thus concentrated in his hands, the committee of bishops as such would cease to be necessary, and he would require only the deacons, who should carry out his directions in economic matters, as we find them doing in the second century. The elevation of the bishop would of course separate him from the other officers in such a way that although still a presbyter (i.e. an officer), he would cease to be called longer by the general name. In the same way the deacons obliged to devote themselves to their specific duties, would cease to have much to do with the more general functions of the other officers, to whom finally the name presbyter—originally a general term—would be confined, and thus become a distinctive name for part of the officers. In their hands would remain the general disciplinary functions which had belonged from the beginning to the entire body of officers as such, and their rank would naturally be second only to that of the bishop, for the deacons as assistants only, not independent officers, could not outrank them (though they struggled hard in the third and fourth centuries to do so). It is of course likely that in a great many churches the simple undivided office would long remain, and that bishops and deacons as specific officers distinguished from the general body would not exist. But after the distinction between the three orders had been sharply drawn in one part of Christendom, it must soon spread throughout the Church and become established even in places where it had not been produced by a natural process of evolution. The Church organization of the second century is thus complete, and its further development need not concern us here, for it is not matter of controversy. Nor is this the place to show how the local church officers gradually assumed the spiritual functions which belonged originally to apostles, prophets, and teachers. The Didache is the document which has shed most light upon that process, and Hernack in his edition of it has done most to make the matter clear.