The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries
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Thomas M. Lindsay
composed before his Roman captivity, although they naturally admit there must have been ministries from the very first, and that the ministries took shape under the two conceptions of “oversight” and “subordinate service.” It may be so, but the arguments do not convince me.380 If the προϊστάμενοι of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and to the Romans were not office-bearers they did the work of office-bearers. To assert that a period of fifty years must have elapsed before the προϊστάμενοι of the earlier epistles could become the official πρεσβύτεροι of the Pastoral Epistles (which is practically Loening’s contention), or that the development required eighty years (which Harnack requires), seems to me to be quite unwarrantable. As has been said before, things move fast in young communities and, so far as the development in organization goes, there is no reason whatever why the state of matters described in the Pastoral Epistles should not have arrived at a comparatively early date. It is quite in accordance with what has been said, that in all the New Testament writings, and indeed in all the earlier books of discipline, the work done is always thought more of than the persons selected to do it, and office-bearers are honoured for their work’s sake rather than for their rank. The one thought running through all the earlier documents is that the power to render special service to the community—for rule and leadership according to primitive modes of thought are always founded on “service” and never on “lordship”—depends on the possession of “gifts” engrafted by the Spirit on individual character, and the occasion of these particular services is their recognition by the community, who appoint the brethren to serve it in ruling it. One of the chief services which belonged to those who were placed at the head of the Christian communities was to set an example to those under their charge, and what the leaders did all the brethren in their several places were expected to do. Hence in the New Testament writings, as well as in the earlier canons, the qualities which were to determine the selection of men to be leaders were those qualities of stable Christian character which all Christians ought to possess. The function of the missionary or his deputy, as we can see from the Pastoral Epistles, was to advise the community in their selection of those who were to be over them, and to inculcate such principles of selection as would abide permanently in their minds, and thus secure a succession of worthy office-bearers when the first missionaries of the Gospel were no longer present to advise; or to use the words of St. Clement of
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Expositor (1887, Jan.-June), 328-31; The arguments put shortly are:—St. Paul addresses his advice about discipline, etc., to the whole community and not to special individuals who are in the position of office-bearers; all the members of the Christian community are exhorted to do what is enjoined upon the leaders (1 Thess. v. 14); the word ἔργον (verse 12) shows that an office is not thought of; while in Rom. xii. 6-8 presidency stands between “liberality” and “showing mercy,” and is described as a “gift”! The same arguments, it appears to me, would exclude the presence of office-bearers in the Didache and in the Epistle of Clement; for there the exhortations to exercise discipline are addressed to the whole community. The fact that the congregational meeting is the supreme judge does not exclude the fact of office-bearers. Compare below pp. 171 ff. for the Didache and 176 n. for 1 Clement.
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