recognise the authority of their fathers in Christ found themselves aliens from the brotherhood. The challenge may have come from the side of Montanist enthusiasm or Novatian separatism; or it may have been due to the self-assertion of an individual against church order, as when Colluthus, who was no bishop, attempted to ordain a presbyter; or it may have had its origin in a collapse of discipline such as led to the attempt of some deacons, in days of persecution, to offer the eucharist; or it may have been a challenge in theory rather than in practice, like Aerius' denial of the distinctive dignity of the episcopate. But, in whatever sense and from whatever quarter the authority of the ministry was challenged, the mind of the Church spoke out loud in its vindication. For the ministry was acknowledged, instinctively and universally, as the divinely given stewardship of truth and grace, as part of the new creation of God; and, 'the things which the Lord instituted through His Apostles, these,' in Athanasius' words, ' remain honourable and valid.' As an institution of Christ through His Apostles-divine, permanent, and necessary-the threefold ministry made its appearance on the horizon of our epoch and 'the memory of man ran not to the contrary.' position of the argu ment. CHAPTER IV THE INSTITUTION OF THE APOSTOLATE The present HITHERTO we have been occupied in expounding a certain set of principles which are involved in the phrase 'the apostolic succession of the ministry,' and in adducing a great body of evidence calculated to show how completely, and (as far as appears) without exception, these principles obtained acceptance in the Church, and governed her action, from the middle of the second century onwards. It is, in fact, impossible to exaggerate the intimacy with which the episcopal succession is bound up with the fixed canon of Scripture and the permanent and stable creed to constitute what can rightly be called 'historical Christianity.' We may indeed see more clearly, on reviewing the earlier period, that there was the same tentativeness in the process by which the formulated nomenclature and the exact form of the ministry was arrived at, as appears in the corresponding formulation of the creed of the Church; but in neither case did this development in language and form involve any uncertainty of principle in the period already reviewed: and, if we compare the development of the ministry with the process by which the canon of Scripture was fixed, we are struck with the fact that the hesitation, which appears in the latter process as to what did and what did not fall within the canon, has no parallel in any hesitation as to what did or what did not constitute at any particular moment the ministry in the Church. On this subject there was no conflict or division of opinion inside the body of the Church which is brought under our notice. The discussion about Montanism was not (as we have seen) a discussion as to the rights of prophets, but as to whether certain people were or were not justified in claiming the prophetic inspiration. Hitherto, however, we have not touched the period which lies behind the middle of the second century. The reason for this has been that we have such very fragmentary light on the space which intervenes between this date and the point where the Acts of the Apostles comes to an end. 'I have elsewhere,' says Dr. Salmon, 'described the paucity of documents dating from the age immediately succeeding the apostolic, by saying that church history passes through a tunnel. We have good light where we have the books of the New Testament to guide us, and good light again when we come down to the abundant literary remains of the latter part of the second century; but there is an intervening period, here and there faintly illumined by a few documents giving such scanty and interrupted light as may be afforded by the air-holes of a tunnel. If in our study of the dimly-lighted portion of the history we wish to distinguish what is certain from what is doubtful, we may expect to find the things certain in what can be seen from either of the two well-lighted ends. If the same thing is visible on looking from either end, we can have no doubt of its existence.'1 1 Expositor, July 1887, p. 3 f. It remains first, in the light of Christ's intention. We proceed, then, to examine the beginnings of the ministry-in other words, first, to obtain an answer to the question whether the postulates of the later Church are verified by the intention of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels: secondly, to interrogate the history of the apostolic Church as recorded in the Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles, and draw out the witness which this record affords on the earliest development of the Christian ministry: lastly, to scrutinize the documents which shed a certain amount of light on the subapostolic period, and see whether they bear out the theory of the apostolic succession, and whether, further, they supply the links which enable us to form an adequate idea of the method by which the ministry of the apostolic days passed into the ministry of the better known period of church history.1 The first task before us is to investigate the intention of Christ. It has been already pointed out that the method of Christ was to withdraw from the many upon the few. While He healed widely and freely all who had faith to be healed,' He taught those only, except by the way, in whom He discerned the higher sort of faith which would make them disciples. These He trained to become a firm consolidated body, rooted 1 Speaking of The Church and the Ministry, a pamphlet in review of his Bampton Lectures, Dr. Hatch says of the author: 'He begins by asserting that he accepts the author's method, and that he wishes only to answer the question which the author proposed, viz. What does the existing evidence teach as to the early history of ecclesiastical organization? but he silently, and perhaps unconsciously, devotes the rest of his review to the consideration of a very different question, viz. How far can the existing evidence be interpreted on the Augustinian theory?' (B. L. pref, to 2nd ed. p. xiii.). My contention is that the evidence at certain periods teaches positively, that is to say, the evidence collected in the last chapter and portions of the evidence now to be produced; but in the subapostolic period it is often necessary, on account of the deficiency of positive evidence, to be content with finding that what there is is consistent with the positive position, which the earlier and later evidence so strongly suggests as almost to force it upon us. suggest the of an official apostolate, and grounded in faith in Himself, that they might be the nucleus of His universal Church. Even within the body of these disciples there were inner and outer circles: there were the twelve and also they that were with them,'1 the women who ministered to them and the seventy who shared at a certain stage the apostolic commission.2 Confining our attention now The Gospels to the inner circle, with whom Christ chiefly concerned institution Himself, we ask ourselves: Was His training of the twelve the training merely of typical disciples ? or was it, over and above this, the training of ministers, of officers in His kingdom? This latter seems undoubtedly the true answer. 'He called unto Him whom He Himself would, . . . and He appointed twelve that they might be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach and to have authority to cast out devils.' 'He called His disciples and He chose from them twelve, whom also He named 1 St. Luke xxiv. 33; cf. St. Mark iv. 10: oi nepì avròv σùv tois dwdeka. 2 The seventy (or seventy-two according to another reading) of St. Luke x. I share the earliest apostolic commission: they are sent forth (St. Luke x. 3 : idoù àñoσTÉλλW vμâs, cf. ix. 2), with authority over the powers of Satan (x. 17, 19, cf. ix. 1), as representatives of the kingdom, endowed with its peace and having power to communicate it (x. 9, cf. ix. 2, and observe x. 6 : ἐπαναπαύσεται ἐπ' αὐτὸν ἡ εἰρήνη ὑμῶν· εἰ δὲ μήγε, ἐφ' ὑμᾶς ἀνακάμψει), and as representatives of Christ (x. 16 : ὁ ἀκούων vμшv éμoù áкovet, K.T.A.). The number seventy or seventy-two is supposed to have reference to the seventy-two heads of the Sanhedrin; or to the seventy-two tribes of mankind (see Godet in loc. and Clem. Recog. ii. 42); or, much more naturally, to the seventy elders endued with the spirit of prophecy (Num. xi. 16-30). Thus the later Church saw here the institution of the presbyterate by our Lord; see Clem. Ep. Petri 1 and Jerome Ep. lxxviii. ad Fabiol. mans. 6. (The seventy elders, however, were also regarded as the prototype of the chorepiscopi.) In some traditions these seventy are reckoned apostles. Thus the Syriac Teaching of the Apostles reckons seventy-two apostles as originating 'the ordination to the priesthood,' and a late Arab writer, historian of the Coptic Church, who may draw on an earlier tradition, speaks of the apostles as seventy, besides the twelve; see refs. p. 119, n.1 This suggests the 'apostles' and 'prophets' of the Didache. It is important that those who accept the historical character of St. Luke's Gospel should recollect that there must have been in the apostolic Church a number of these 'evangelists,' who had received our Lord's commission, and whom we certainly cannot identify with presbyters whose office was local. |