From: mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Qualifications for Elder
Date: 24 Jul 92 06:40:28 GMT

Tom Albrecht writes:

>The priesthood tradition, as practiced by Roman Catholics and the Orthodox,
>is not found in the New Testament.  It is simply tradition.

>Again, from the perspective of the New Testament, bishops/elders are not
>priests, and neither are deacons.  Neither are deacons and elder/bishops
>treated as the same office.

The problem here is we have two sets of offices being mixed confusingly.

In episcopal polity, the ministerial offices and the authoritarian offices
are largely occupied by the same people.  In presbyterian polity, they are
largely occupied by different people.

The office of "elder" (presbyter) in episcopal polity is held not by
bishops, but by priests.  Bishops hold the office of "apostle".  Therefore,
the *notion* of apostolic succession is not "an extra-biblical tradition",
but simply a result of the practice of episcopal ordinations-- in which the
necessary acts is the laying-on of hands by (at least) three bishops, just
as in more protestant practice.

Having come from a presbyterian background and gone over to anglicanism,
which is both epsicopal AND prebyterian in polity, I can give you some first
hand comparisons.  First of all, there only thing prebyterian polity which
resembles the office of a bishop is the next level up in the prebyterian
hierarchy-- presbytery, synod, or general assembly(?-- it's been a while).
There's no office of apostle, per se.  Priests in episcopal polity combine
the functions of presbyterian elders and ministers (the latter absorbing
some of the functions of bishops), with the modification that in anglican
polity the vestry and its delegates take on some of the function of
presbyterian elders (the semi-presbyterian streak I mentioned earlier) in
terms of church governance.  Deacons in the presbyterian system correspond
to the vestry in anglicanism and to (if my terminology is not too far out of
date) the chapter in RC churches.  Episcopal deacons represent the biggest
problem in this in that they are the one case where there really is an
obvious evolution which (most modern anglicans and RCs agree) has really
proven to be unfortunate.

The real problem here, though, is that both sides see what they are doing as
consonant with the NT.  I don't see a requirement in scripture for a
particular structure.  Paul speaks of offices, but he doesn't speak of the
structures connecting them-- and as far as THAT is concerned, the episcopal
system has about 1200 years of priority over the presbyterian.  My personal
feeling is that it is easy to make too much of church governance.  One
simply must be prepared to take action when the structures of the church
become a hindrance.  In the Episcopal Church, for example, there is
considerable discussion, based upon the poor examples of the last general
convention (more presbyterianism), on some sort of a reorganization,
including the structure of the house of bishops.  And this is entirely
proper, for the work of the churc is not the erection of political
structures, but rather the kingdom of God.
-- 
C. Wingate        + "I bind unto myself today
                  +    the strong name of the Trinnity,
mangoe@cs.umd.edu +      by invocation of the same:
tove!mangoe       +        the Three in One and One in Three."