ABSTRACT
If we follow Weber (1927) in his division of authority into three types – charis-matic, rational or legal and traditional – the third has little relevance to ecclesiastical ministry in the early Christian era. Priesthoods were not inherited, and though property was, we can only guess at the influence that was exercised over primitive congregations by the owners of the houses in which they gathered. For Weber the mark of Catholic Christianity is a bureaucratic priesthood whose authority is of the rational or legal type, and he follows Rudolf Sohm in the belief that this had quickly supervened on an earlier phase in which the leaders of the new movement had no legal or traditional credentials, and therefore owed their following entirely to their own gifts. On this account (for Sohm if not for Weber), the first two centuries are an age of purity, while the era of the church Fathers is the beginning of ecclesiastical decadence. In response historians of all denominations have denied that the evidence lends itself to such a clear antithesis. The truth appears to be that the restraint of charismatic gifts began with the Apostles, that the exercise of them never implied a negation of authority, and that some at least were indulged, or even encouraged, by the emerging magisterium. The most judicious narrative will be one that, in the words of Edouard Schweizer (1961: 230) finds a way ‘between Rome and Sohm’.
