Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Thu, 9 Apr 1992 01:52:55 EDT
From:         Marty Helgesen <MNHCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Hierarchy in the Apostolic Church

Ian,

     You object to my writing that the pope is the visible head of
the Church on Earth  and say that you do not post all that you be-
lieve for fear of alienating some people.  I don't go out of my way
to post everything I believe either.  I wrote what I did because I
was responding to questions and comments on Catholic beliefs about
the papacy.  In correcting misunderstandings about what the Catholic
Church teaches about the papacy it seemed reasonable to state what
the Church really teaches.

     You say, "Since the biblical church is not a heirachial struc-
tured organisation, there can be no single head of it... The church
is a collective of autonomous units, collected under the organisation
of _several_ apostles. St Paul no more had St Peter as his 'boss'
than I do... Each was an apostle, and hence each had varying degrees
of responsibility and authority for their charges.."

     The church described in the New Testament is hierarchical.
There were bishops who ruled the church, deacons, and laity who were
to obey.  St. Paul, for example, appointed Timothy and Titus bishops
by the laying on of hands and instructed them to appoint other bish-
ops after them. (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1).  He tells each of them how he
should exercise his authority, showing that they had authority to
exercise.  Also, Acts 20 tells us that when St. Paul stopped at the
port city of Miletus he summoned the elders of the church in Ephesus.
While speaking to them he said, "Take heed to yourselves and to all
the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to
feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood."
(v.28)  As for the laity, Hebrews 13:17 tells them, "Obey them that
have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for
your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with
joy and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you."   (The
Today's English Version translates that verse as "Obey your leaders
and follow their orders.  They watch over your souls without resting
since they must give to God an account of their service.  If you obey
them they will do their work gladly; if not they will do it with
sadness, and that would be of no help to you.")  Since the leaders
watch over believers' souls and must answer to God for them, it is
clear that they are church leaders not secular leaders.

     It is not correct to say that each individual one was autono-
mous.  Acts 15 describes how a church council of apostles and elders
made decisions about the applicability of the law of Moses and send
letters to the churches in other cities informing them of their
decrees, which were to be obeyed: "For it has seemed good to the Holy
Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these neces-
sary things." (v.28)

     The Gospels clearly show that St. Peter had a special role among
the Apostles, and the first part of Acts show him exercising leader-
ship in the early Church.  Acts does not show him exercising the same
kind of authority that later popes exercised, but there was no need.
However, whether the Bishop of Rome as the successor of St. Peter has
authority over other bishops can be considered an internal matter
among Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans.  It doesn't affect the
hierarchical position of the bishops in general, which most Protes-
tants deny.

     The Church Fathers also show the same understanding of the
hierarchical structure of Christ's Church.   Around A.D. 96, while
St. John was still alive in Ephesus, the Christians in Corinth re-
belled against their local bishops.  St. Clement, the Bishop of Rome,
wrote a letter to them reproaching them and stating that the bishops
derive their authority from God.  As a result the Corinthians submit-
ted to their bishops.  Many early Christians believed that St. Clem-
ent's letter belonged in the canon of Scripture, but the Church
eventually decided it did not.

     Around A.D. 107 St. Ignatius of Antioch was arrested and taken
to Rome to be martyred.  During his journey he wrote letters to
several local churches.  To the Trallians he wrote, "You must contin-
ue, then, to do nothing apart from the bishop.  Be obedient, too, to
the priests, as to the apostles of Jesus Christ....In the same way
all should respect the deacons as they would Jesus Christ just as
they respect the bishop as representing the Father and the priests as
the council of God and the college of the Apostles.  Apart from these
there is nothing that can be called a Church."

     To the Smyrneans he wrote, "Shun schisms as the source of trou-
bles.  Let all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ did the Father, and
the priests as you would the Apostles.  Reverence the deacons as you
would the command of God.  Apart from the bishop, let no one perform
any of the functions that pertain to the Church.  Let that Eucharist
be held valid which is offered by the bishop or by one to whom the
bishop has committed this charge.  Wherever the bishop appears, there
let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic
Church."

     I could produce lots of other quotations from the Fathers stat-
ing the same idea of Christ's Church.  You, no doubt, will object
that their writings are not part of the Bible.  That is true, despite
those early Christians who thought that St. Clement of Rome's Letter
to the Corinthians was part of the Bible.  However, while they are
not scripture they do show how the first Christians understood
Christ's Church.  As with other Catholic doctrines, to reject them is
to adopt a position similar to the Mormon idea of the Great Apostacy.

     I will finish this posting by quoting from G. K. Chesterton:

     "Those who maintain that Christianity was not a Church but a
moral movement of idealists have been forced to push the period of
its perversion or disappearance further and further back.  A bishop
of Rome writes claiming authority in the very lifetime of St. John
the Evangelist; and it is described as the first papal aggression.  A
friend of the Apostles writes of them as men he knew and says they
taught him the doctrine of the Sacrament; and Mr. Wells can only
murmur that the reaction towards barbaric blood rites may have hap-
pened rather earlier than might be expected.  The date of the Fourth
Gospel, which at one time was steadily growing later and later, is
now steadily growing earlier and earlier; until critics are staggered
at the dawning and dreadful possibility that it might be something
like what it professes to be.  The last limit of an early date for
the extinction of true Christianity has probably been found by the
latest German professor whose authority is invoked by Dean Inge.
This learned scholar says that Pentecost was the occasion for the
first founding of an ecclesiastical, dogmatic, and despotic Church
utterly alien to the simple ideals of Jesus of Nazareth. This may be
called, in a popular as well as a learned sense, the limit.  What do
professors of this kind imagine that men are made of?  Suppose it
were a matter of any merely human movement, let us say that of con-
scientious objectors.  Some say the early Christians were Pacifists;
I do not believe it for a moment; but I am quite willing to accept
the parallel for the sake of the argument.  Tolstoy or some great
preacher of peace among peasants has been shot as a mutineer for
defying conscription; and a little while afterwards a few followers
meet together in an upper room in remembrance of him.  They never had
any reason for coming together except that common memory; they are
men of many kinds with nothing to bind them, except that the greatest
event in all their lives was this tragedy of the teacher of universal
peace.  They are always repeating his words, revolving his problems,
trying to imitate his character.  The Pacifists meet at their Pente-
cost and are possessed of a sudden ecstasy of enthusiasm and wild
rush of the whirlwind of inspiration, in a course of which they
proceed to establish universal Conscription, to increase the Navy
Estimates, to insist on everyone going about armed to the teeth and
on all the frontiers bristling with artillery; the proceedings con-
cluded with the singing of 'Boys of the Bulldog Breed' and "Don't let
them scrap the British Navy.'  That is something like a fair parallel
to the theory of these critics; that the transition from their idea
of Jesus to their idea of Catholicism could have been made in the
little upper room of Pentecost.  Surely anybody's common sense would
tell him that enthusiasts, who only met through their common enthusi-
asm for a leader whom they loved, would not instantly rush away to
establish everything that he hated.  No, if the 'ecclesiastical and
dogmatic system' is as old as Pentecost it is as old as Christmas.
If we trace it back to such very early Christians we must trace it
back to Christ."
                  THE EVERLASTING MAN (1925)

Marty Helgesen
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia