ABSTRACT
The people of God or ‘royal priesthood’ created by Our Lord was, and is, a historical society. As such, it required, like any other human society, leadership, organization and government by officers chosen to succeed the apostles, who would exercise an authority recognized by the community. As is well known, the early Christian communities were under the direction of a variety of ministers. In the Acts of the Apostles and the Pastoral Epistles and in the earliest pastoral writings outside the New Testament canon, the holders of these offices are referred to as presbyters (elders), bishops (overseers, a term of secular origin) and deacons. By the time Ignatius of Antioch was writing (c. 120 AD), an ecclesiastical structure was becoming visible in which city churches were presided over monarchically by bishops, assisted in each case by a group of presbyters. The appointment or, to use the later term ‘ordination’, to these offices was
accomplished by a twofold process. A candidate for office was chosen by the clergy and laity of the Christian community concerned. The earliest instruction we have for the consecration of a bishop is to be found in The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome (218-35 AD), which says ‘He shall be ordained bishop who has been chosen by the people and is without blame.’1 The early canons insist on the necessity of lay participation in the process; its absence was held to invalidate an episcopal election.2 The second stage of the procedure was the consecration of the candidate by other bishops and presbyters who laid their hands on the elect while asking the Holy Spirit to grant him the charism needed to perform his office. Allowing for variations appropriate to a subordinate office, this was the procedure followed by the Apostles as described in Acts 6: 1-6, where seven deacons were chosen to administer the almsgiving and material wants of the early Christian community at Jerusalem, with the express purpose of freeing the apostles for the ministry of the Word. When we speak of ‘ordination’ we generally have in mind ordination to the
priesthood, recognizing that ordination to the subdiaconate and diaconate are preliminary stages on the way to the priesthood. But from an early date we encounter other orders and ministries. We meet some of these in Hippolytus. By the time of the legal code of the Emperor Theodosius II (438 AD), the clergy constituted a special social category in law and comprised, in addition to bishops, priests and deacons, subdeacons and four minor orders of acolyte, lector, exorcist and doorkeeper. All of these were admitted to office by a liturgical procedure of
ordination, but the apostolic procedure of the laying-on of hands by a bishop was confined to the ordination of bishops, priests and deacons. These alone received the apostolic mission from the Holy Spirit to direct the churches and to preserve and transmit to posterity the deposit of faith (what Hippolytus calls the paradosis) contained in the witness of the apostles. The subordinate role of the other offices was signified by the ordination
procedure in which the candidate was simply blessed by the bishop and proffered the symbols of his function – in the case of a lector, a lectionary, and in that of a doorkeeper, a key. The later classification of the subdiaconate as one of three major orders owed much to the fact that, from the sixth century onwards, its holders in the Western Church were bound by the obligation of celibacy, but ordination to the subdiaconate never involved the laying-on of hands by a bishop and, following the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council, the order of subdeacon, along with the four minor orders, was abolished in the Latin Church.3 In the sub-apostolic age the diaconate was not regarded as a probationary
appointment on the way to the priesthood. In most cases, it was an appointment for life, involving responsibility for the administration of church properties and the dispensation of poor relief, alongside a ministerial role in the eucharistic liturgy.4 Deacons continued to discharge this role in the early Middle Ages. They held an important place in the government of the major city churches. The head of their college, the archdeacon (to be distinguished from the diocesan archdeacon of the Middle Ages, who was the ‘bishops eye’ and overseer of a named territorial area of a diocese) was a figure of power. At Rome, popes were often drawn from the ranks of the deacons of the city. Gregory VII, when he was elected to the papacy in 1073, was archdeacon of the Roman Church and, as such, he had for many years been a leading figure in the affairs of the Holy See. Alongside these offices to which people were formally appointed or ordained,
we encounter in the sub-apostolic period other ministries, those of prophets and teachers, which appear to derive their role from personal charisms that win recognition from the Christian communities. Prophets were itinerant preachers. There is no evidence to indicate that they were in any sense ordained. In the Didache of the Apostles (c. 100 AD) the churches are told to receive them as they would the Lord, but the writer already hints at the existence of anarchic tendencies in the form of bogus prophets battening on the faithful: ‘a prophet shall not stay more than a single day or a second day, if need be; but if he stays three days he is a false prophet.’5 The wandering monk or cleric who was a professional guest was a constant cause of anxiety to the medieval Church. It is clear that itinerant preachers like these had no role in the government of the early Christian communities. The emergence of a monarchic episcopate in the course of the second century
represented the establishment of a Church order, based on clearly regulated appointment to office. In human affairs the charismatic has to be institutionalized if it is to be preserved. The writer of the Didache instructed the churches to appoint bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, and told them that ‘for you they also perform the service of prophets and teachers’.6 Conflicts between the religion of authority and religion of the spirit often occur in Christian history; perhaps they are an inescapable product of the human predicament. At critical periods
there have always been individuals outside the clerical establishment, like St Catherine of Siena, who have assumed a prophetic role at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Since they have usually been critics of the status quo or advocates of change, they have naturally encountered incomprehension or suspicion from the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Our early sources insist that the government of Churches is the responsibility of
bishops, presbyters/priests and deacons – those chosen and ordained by the layingon of hands to the apostolic ministry. Their authority related in the first place to the preservation and handing-on of the orthodox faith transmitted from the apostles (the paradosis). The idea of apostolicity remained very strong in the second century. What guaranteed the authenticity of the doctrine of any Church was the principle of continuity by which a Church traced its teaching through a succession of bishops to an apostolic founder. When Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons wanted to refute the Gnostics (c. 170 AD), he did not appeal to the Scriptures; he produced a list of bishops to show that the holy tradition had been preserved without interruption. The authority of the bishop, assisted by the priests and deacons, included the unique right to celebrate the Eucharist and regulate the cult. It also extended to the management of the Church’s corporate affairs, its property and the organization of poor relief. The prayer for the consecration of a bishop given by Hippolytus requests the Holy Spirit to enable him to ‘feed’ the Church of God, words taken from St Paul’s admonition (Acts 10: 28.); but the Latin Vulgate translated the Greek word ‘feed’ (poinaimein) as ‘rule’ (regere).7 The flock owes obedience to the officers it has chosen. Ignatius of Antioch warns the congregation of Milesia to ‘do nothing without the bishop and presbyters’ and tells the people of Smyrna to ‘pay respect to the deacons, as to God’s commandments. Let no man do anything relating to the church apart from the bishop.’8
