62. Deacons and Deaconesses

232 CHAPTER X. ORGANIZATION OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH. term bishop. The first thing which Paul and Barnabas did after preaching the gospel in

Asia Minor was to organize churches by the appointment of elders.719 3. The office of the presbyter-bishops was to teach and to rule the particular congregation committed to their charge. They were the regular “pastors and teachers.”720 To them belonged the direction of public worship, the administration of discipline, the care of souls, and the management of church property. They were usually chosen from the first converts, and appointed by the apostles or their delegates, with the approval of the congregation, or by the congregation itself, which supported them by voluntary contributions. They were solemnly introduced into their office by the apostles or by their fellow presbyters through prayers and the laying on of hands.701

The presbyters always formed a college or corporation, a presbytery; as at Jerusalem, at Ephesus, at Philippi, and at the ordination of Timothy.702 They no doubt maintained a relation of fraternal equality. The New Testament gives us no information about the division of labor among them, or the nature and term of a presidency. It is quite probable that the members of the presbyteral college distributed the various duties of their office among themselves according to their respective talents, tastes, experience, and convenience. Possibly, too, the president, whether temporary or permanent, was styled distinctively the bishop; and from this the subsequent separation of the episcopate from the presbyterate may easily have arisen. But so long as the general government of the church was in the hands of the apostles and their delegates, the bishops were limited in their jurisdiction either to one congregation or to a small circle of congregations.

The distinction of “teaching presbyters” or ministers proper, and “ruling presbyters” or lay-elders, is a convenient arrangement of Reformed churches, but can hardly claim apostolic sanction, since See Hatch, Organiz. Lect. II. and IV., and his art. “Priest” in Smith and Cheetham, II. 1700. Hatch makes large use of the inscriptions found at Salkhad, in the Haurân, at Thera, and elsewhere. He advances the new theory that the bishops were originally a higher order of deacons and supreme almoners of the 701 Acts 14:23; Tit. 1:5; 1 Tim. 5:22; 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6. On the election, ordination and support of ministers, see my Hist. Ap. Ch. pp. 500-506. 702 Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2, 4, 6, 23; 16:4; 20:17, 28; 21:18; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim 4:14; James 5: 14; 1 Pet. 5: 1. sovereign congregation, while the presbyters had charge of the discipline. He admits that bishops and presbyters were equals in rank, and their names interchangeable, but that their relations differed in different churches during the first two centuries, and that the chief function of the bishop originally was the care and disposition of the charitable funds. Hence the stress laid by Paul on the necessity of a bishop being ἀφιλάργυρος and φιλόζενος . In the long series of ecclesiastical canons and imperial edicts, the bishops are represented especially in the light of trustees of church property. Acts 11:30, at the time of the famine when the church of Antioch sent a collection to the elders for their brethren in Judaea. Acts 14:23; comp. Tit. 1:5. ποιμένες καὶ διδάσκαλοι, Eph. 4:11. the one passage on which it rests only speaks of two functions in the same office.703 Whatever may have been the distribution and rotation of duties, Paul expressly mentions ability to teach among the regular requisites for the episcopal or presbyteral office.704 703 1 Tim. 5:17: “Let the elders that rule well (οἱ καλως προεστωτες πρεσβύτεροι) be counted of double honor ( διπλης τιμης), especially those who labor in the word and in teaching (ἐνλόγῳκαὶδιδασκαλία)ι.” Some commentators emphasizeκαλως, some refer the “ double honor” to higher rank and position, others to better remuneration, still others to both. 704 1 Tim. 3:2: “The bishop must be ... apt to teach (διδακτικόν).” The same is implied in Tit. 1:9; Act 20:28; and Heb. 13:17. Lightfoot takes the right view (p. 192): “Though government was probably the first conception of the office, yet the work of teaching must have fallen to the presbyters from the very first and have assumed greater prominence as time went on.” On the question of teaching and ruling elders, compare, besides other treatises, Peter Colin Campbell: The Theory of Ruling Eldership (Edinb. and London, 1866), and two able articles by Dr. R. D. Hitchcock and Dr. E. F. Hatfield (both Presbyterians) in the “American Presbyterian Review” for April and October, 1868. All these writers dissent from Calvin’s interpretation of 1 Tim. 5:17, as teaching two kinds of presbyters: (1) those who both taught and ruled, and (2) those who ruled only; but Campbell pleads from 1 Cor. 12:28; Rom. 12:8; and Acts 15:22, 25 for what he calls “Lay Assessors.” Dr. Hitchcock holds that the primitive presbyters were empowered and expected both to teach and to rule. Dr. Hatfield tries to prove that the Christian presbyters, like the Jewish elders, were only to rule; the office of teaching having been committed to the apostles, evangelists, and other missionaries. The last was also the view of Dr. Thornwell, of South Carolina (on Ruling Elders), and is advocated in a modified form by an Oxford scholar of great ability, Vice-Principal Hatch (l.c. Lecture