Results: (1) The ministry has (a) authority in government; and ancient church of the Corinthians, for the sake of one or two persons, is making sedition against its presbyters.'1 'Who therefore [with reference to Moses' conduct, Exod. xxxii. 30 f.] is noble among you? Who is compassionate? Who is fulfilled with love? Let him say: "If by reason of me there be faction and strife and schisms, I retire, I depart, whither ye will, and I do that which is ordered by the people: only let the flock of Christ be at peace with its duly-appointed presbyters."' 'Ye therefore that laid the foundation of the sedition, submit yourselves unto the presbyters and receive chastisement unto repentance, bending the knees of your heart.' 'It is right for us to give heed to so great and so many examples and to submit the neck and, occupying the place of obedience, to take our side with them that are the leaders of our souls."4 It remains for us to sum up the evidence of Clement's Epistle so far as it affects the ministry. (1) St. Clement speaks of the ministry in the Church from two points of view. It represents the authority of government, and so claims obedience : (b) a distinct but it has also its special function in relation to the liturgy. Worship. The 'liturgy' of the Christian Church is the perpetuation in principle of the 'liturgy' of the Jews, and the Christian Church, like the Church of the old covenant, approaches God as one body, differentiated in function, with grades of privilege function in minimizing language of the highest goods and the worst evils, cf. c. 19, where he speaks of the character of the saints having 'improved us.' In this moderation of tone he contrasts with Ignatius. (ε) προσφέρειν τὰ δῶρα. Cf. Αpost. Const. viii. 12. 3 : οἱ διάκονοι προσαγέτωσαν τὰ δῶρα τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ. Knowing as we do that Irenaeus and Justin Martyr alike regarded the sacrifice' of the Eucharist as centering round the oblations of the bread and wine, and having in view the fact that Clement is here speaking of the Church's 'liturgy' as the spiritual counterpart of the sacrificial 'liturgy' of the old covenant, it seems to me impossible to doubt that the words dupa #poσdépei here refer to the offering of the eucharistic gifts. Cf. Harnack Texte u. Untersuch. Band ii, Heft 2, p. 144, note 73: Beyond a doubt the apoσdépeiv dŵpa ty deợ, in the sense of offering sacrifices (Opferdarbringung), appears as the most important function of the episcopi': and cf. the quotation from his Dogmengeschichte, p. 204 n. above, and his Constitution and Law p. 70. (α) For τοῦ ἱδρυμένου αὐτοῖς τόπου cf. c. 40 τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν ἴδιος ὁ τόπος. 1 c. 47. 8 c. 54 μετὰ τῶν καθεσταμένων πρεσβυτέρων. a c. 57. 4 c. 63 : τὸν τῆς ὑπακοῆς τόπον ἀναπληρώσαντας (cf. r Cor. xiv. 16) προσκλιθῆναι τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν ἀρχηγοῖς τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν. For τόπος see, besides 1 Cor. xiv. 16, cc. 40, 44, and Lightfoot in loc.: the layman too has his rÓTOS. Thus it and dignity, by the appointment of God.1 derived by from the (2) Clement expresses very plainly the fundamental (2) It is principle of the apostolic succession. The Church's succession officers are appointed from above. The body of the Apostles. Church indeed has the privilege of assent or dissent in their appointment,3 and Clement implies that under circumstances of misconduct it could legitimately secure their deposition, but he clearly never conceives that it could appoint them. The ministers of the Church must derive their authority from that one mission by which Christ came forth from God and the Apostles from Christ: in virtue of which these same Apostles appointed bishops and deacons in the churches which they first founded, and afterwards took measures to secure the perpetuation of 1 It corresponds to the high value which Clement clearly sets upon the Church's worship that he should give us, as apparently he does, the eucharistic intercession, with which he was accustomed to lead the worship of his church (cc. 59-61). His language influenced the Liturgy of St. Mark; see Lightfoot's notes, and Brightman Liturgies Eastern and Western i. 131, 559. 2 c. 38 : καθὼς καὶ ἐτέθη ἐν τῷ χαρίσματι αὐτοῦ. c. 44. This is probably implied in the rebuke for having deposed blameless presbyters (C. 44); cf. also 54: ποιῶ τὰ προστασσόμενα ὑπὸ τοῦ πλήθους, though here the supposed speaker is not necessarily a presbyter. (3) There is an order presbyters, their office in due succession. Clement thus gives us the two principles which involve the doctrine of the apostolic succession': the principle that the Church is a differentiated body in which different individuals exercise different and clearly defined functions, and the principle that the right to exercise these functions, so far as they are ministerial, is derived by succession from the Apostles. (3) It is generally supposed that in Clement's superior to Epistle we have only two orders of ministers, viz. presbyter-bishops and deacons, recognised in the Church. But this supposition-though there need be no objection to it on the ground of principledoes not seem to account for all the phenomena which the Epistle presents. It is quite true that presbyters are also called bishops, and that there is no local authority in the church at Corinth above the presbyters. Clement's language about submission to them postulates this. It may also be acknowledged that it is an unwarrantable hypothesis that the see of Corinth was vacant when Clement wrote. But it does not therefore follow that there is not in this Epistle, as in the Didache, the recognition of a superior authority, though it has yet no localized representation in the particular church addressed. On the contrary Clement's language seems to suggest, or even to require, some such supposition. Besides the presbyters whom the Corinthians are to 'honour,' there is mention on two occasions 2 of their rulers whom they are to reverence and obey. This repeated mention 1 As by Dr. Lightfoot Dissertation pp. 216, 218; and Dr. Langen Gesch. der röm. Kirche i. pp. 80-82. I cannot think that Dr. Bernard (Studia Sacra, Hodder and Stoughton, 1917, c. xii. pp. 255 ff.) succeeds in proving that the presbyters of the Epistle are a distinct body from the episcopi, and are the ¿λλóyoi ávöpes who appointed the episcopi from among their own number. I think that c. 44 proves the identity of presbyters and episcopi by assuming that in removing episcopi from their ministry' the Corinthians had removed 'presbyters' from their 'determined place.' 2 CC. 1, 21. Hermas makes a similar distinction (Vis. iii. 9): cf. p. 293 below. See Hilgenfeld in Zeitschr. für wiss. Theol., 1886, p. 23. of 'rulers' as distinct from 'presbyters,' more particularly as we find the same distinction in the Shepherd of Hermas, cannot be overlooked; and the title 'ruler' is already familiar to us as applied to men of the highest order in the Church, like the prophets Judas and Silas, or those who first brought the Gospel to 'the Hebrews,' or the members of the royal family of Christ who 'ruled' in the churches of Palestine.1 Again there have been certain 'distinguished men,' who in accordance with the arrangement made by the Apostles have, since their death, appointed the presbyters. It appears then that Clement does recognise a body of men who at least appointed the presbyters at Corinth, and whom it is natural to identify with the 'rulers' mentioned elsewhere. 'Rulers' is a general term and we cannot tell what further official title they had, if any, but we must recollect that there is the same absence of a definite official title for the 'men of distinction' like Timothy and Titus, who probably filled exactly the same position during the lifetime of the Apostles. It is quite natural that they should have been known sufficiently well as individuals and as men of quasi-apostolic authority to make an exact title a matter of indifference. Definite terminology is in the region of administration as of theology a gradual growth. It is enough that we should recognise that certain men in the Church were understood to have the apostolic authority to ordain elders and presumably the powers of control which always accompanied that authority. This is a class 1 Acts xv. 22: Hegesippus ap. Euseb. H.E. iii. 32. 6 пponyoûvrai náons ékkλnoias: Heb. xiii. 7. In this last passage the youμevo are those apostolic preachers who have passed away; but in ver. 17 the present authorities amongst the Hebrews, 'who watch for their souls as men who shall give account,' and whom they are to greet (ver. 24), are also called oi nyovμevo vμv. These would more naturally be local 'presbyters' but not necessarily, more especially if the Epistle is not written to any one community: see on these rulers' Harnack Texte u. Untersuch. Band ii, Heft 1, pp. 94-96. Later the expression is generally used for bishops (Euseb. H. E. iii. 36. 10; Apost. Const. ii. 25. 7, 20. 4, 46. 3, in all cases from the Didascalia), but not always. (4) which Clement in Rome. of men probably similar to the 'prophets' and 'teachers' of the Didache, whose authority, as we saw reason to believe, passed over to the local presidents who were known as 'bishops.' Some of them may have been already localized in other churches of Greece; only (as it appears) there was not one on the spot at Corinth, though before the time of Hegesippus a regular succession of diocesan bishops was existing there as elsewhere. The fact that no one of this order was yet resident in Corinth may account for Clement's authoritative appeal to that church.1 (4) For, though Clement cannot have been called a represented bishop' in the later sense, his position in the earliest tradition is so prominent that he must in fact have been what would have been designated in later times by that name.2 He merges his own authority, as he writes, in the church which he represents, but in the 1 It becomes natural then, as the prophet is called the Christian high-priest in the Didache, to see in Clement's analogical use of high-priest, priest, and Levite,' in speaking of the Christian ministry, a reference to the three orders, of whom the second and third are presbyter-bishops and deacons, but of whom the highest are these 'rulers' and 'distinguished men,' who correspond to the prophets of the Didache. I do not wish to imply that the term ¿λλóyos àvýp was at all a title reserved for these apostolic men. Clement uses it quite generally of the Corinthian Christians (c. 62): ἀνδράσι πιστοῖς καὶ ἐλλογιμωτάτοις καὶ ἐγκεκυφόσιν κ.τ.λ. So he uses youμevol also of secular rulers (cc. 5, 37, 61, [60]). The evidence of the Clementines is enough to show us that Clement's personality made a great impression on his own generation and on those that succeeded, and it was as a church ruler and bishop that he impressed himself on the memory. It is Clement in the Shepherd who is to communicate the messages given to Hermas to the churches of the other cities (εἰς τὰς ἔξω πόλεις, ἐκείνῳ γὰρ ἐπιτέτραπται: Vis. ii. 4). He appears in the third place in the succession of Roman bishops given by Irenaeus, and in the same place in the catalogue which Epiphanius (Haer. xxvii. 6), if Lightfoot is right, Clement i. 328 ff., repeated from Hegesippus. It does not seem to me that the absence of specific mention of the bishop in Ignatius' letter to the church of Rome is any evidence at all against there having been one. See Lightfoot Ignat. i. p. 381; also Dissertation p. 221, where he remarks: the reason for supposing Clement to have been a bishop is as strong as the universal tradition of the next ages can make it'; also Clement i. p. 68. Clement cannot have been called a 'bishop' in the later sense of the term, because in his epistle he clearly calls the presbyters bishops, and this must reflect the usage of the Roman church. Perhaps, as suggested above, the distinction of men like him, who bore some measure of the apostolic authority, may have made a fixed title not yet indispensable. Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 17, 105) quotes him as the apostle Clement.' His eucharistic prayer, as well as the teaching authority which breathes in his epistle, and which is probably his own. suggests the prerogative freedom of teaching and Eucharist which is assigned to the prophets in the Didache (x. 7, xi. xii). |