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Patterns of Ministry in the New Testament Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Bernard P. Robinson
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Had I been asked back in the 1950’s about the origins of ministry in the church, I should (being, in theological terms, a rather precocious teenager) have had a ready answer. The Lord had appointed apostles, answerable to Peter, who in turn had transmitted their authority to bishops, presbyters and deacons, all subject to Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome. (If pressed, I might have acknowledged that it was possible that presbyters and bishops were originally indistinguishable, and that the threefold ministry may have developed from an earlier twofold ministry.) Had not Clement of Rome shortly before the end of the first century spoken of the line of successors running from Christ to the apostles and then to those that they in turn appointed (1 Clement 42; 44)? The inspired author of Acts had testified that it was the practice of Paul and Barnabas to appoint presbyters in every city (Acts 14:23), and Paul in the Pastoral letters had indicated that the means of designation was the laying-on of hands (1 Tim. 4:14, 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6). The primacy of Peter was evident from Matt. 16:13-20; the intervention in the 90’s by Clement bishop of Rome in the affairs of the Corinthian church reflected the fact that Rome was already then exercising the primacy bestowed on Peter. A decade ago, Fr Aidan Nichols gave an account of the origins of ministry which has much in common with this one, but most of us now think that the way in which things came about was much more complex than that. Let us review the evidence in chronological order.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 83 , Issue 972 , February 2002 , pp. 73 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 A.Nichols, Holy Order. The Apostolic Ministry from the New Testament to the Second Vatican Council (Oscott Series, 5). Dublin, Veritas, 1990.

2 Diaireseis: either ‘varieties’ or (Barrett, Conzelmann, & c) ‘assignments”/‘allotments’ (the verb occurs in the sense ‘to assign/allocate’ in v9).

3 Gifts….service…activities. If the nouns mean different things, gifts may point to divine origin, varieties of ministry/service may connote different ministries (apostleship, prophecy), and activities may refer to effects (miracles, glossolalia, & c).

4 Collins, R.F., ‘Ministry and the Christian Scriptures Ministry and the Christian Scriptures’, in The Ministry of the Word, Essays in Honor of Prof. Dr. Raymond F.Collins — Louvain Studies 20 (1995) 112–25, 122Google Scholar.

5 Nichols, Holy Order, 24; Beyer, H.W., in Kittel, G. (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, tr. and ed. Bromiley, G.W., vol. II. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1964, 619Google Scholar.

6 Goulder, M.D., A Tale of Two Missions. London, SCM, 1994, 54–56Google Scholar.

7 Cwiekowski, F.J., The Beginnings of the Church. Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 1988, 122Google Scholar.

8 Nichols would rather say that it is a natural assumption for the reader to make, since we should practise ‘a “hermeneutic of recognition” whereby we who share the developed consciousness of the later Church come to the evidences of the earliest Church in positive expectation of finding the seeds from which the great tree of the Catholica has grown’ (Nichols, Holy Order, 4). Adoption of such an hermeneutic would, I should have thought, greatly impede scholars from making the uncomfortable discoveries that the advance of knowledge often relies upon.

9 B.Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio‐Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians. Carlisle, Paternoster Press, 1995, 321.

10 Brown, R.E., Priest and Bishop. Biblical Reflections. London, G.Chapman, 1971, 71Google Scholar. Brown notes the similarity between 1 Thess. 5:12, ‘Those who labour among you and rule over (proïstamenous) you in the Lord and admonish you’ and what is said of presbyteroilepiskopoi in 1 Tim. 5:17 (‘those who labour in word and teaching’), but if 1 Timothy is, as is likely, deutero‐Pauline, the echo will tell us little about Paul's thinking and practice.

11 cf Phil. 4:10, where Paul acknowledges receipt of a gift from Philippi.

12 C.K. Barrett, Church, Ministry, and Sacraments in the New Testament (The 1983

13 Didsbury Lectures). Exeter, Paternoster, 1985, 34.

13 Campbell, R.A., The Elders: Seniority within Earliest Christianity. Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1994, 246Google Scholar.

14 Murphy‐O'Connor, J., ‘St Paul: Promoter of the Ministry of Women’, Priests and People 6 (1992) 307–11, 310Google Scholar.

15 See further Robinson, B. P., ‘Peter and his Successors: Tradition and Redaction in Matthew 16.17–19’, JSNT 21 (1984) 85–104Google Scholar.

16 After the death of James the brother of the Lord (in the 60's according to Josephus [AJ 209.1] and Hegesippus [Eusebius HE 2.23.18]) the Jerusalem church was governed by another relative of Jesus, Symeon/Simon. Opposition to rule by the Lord's family may explain the very sharp terms in which Mark treats Jesus’ kith and kin (Mk 3:21,31–35).

17 Robinson, ‘Peter and his Successors’.

18 See Carroll, K. L., ‘“Thou Art Peter”’, NT 6 (1963) 268–76Google Scholar. (I find myself more in agreement with Carroll now than 1 did at the time of my 1984 article.)

19 Barrett, Church, Ministry and Sacraments, 79.

20 Barrett, Church, Ministry and Sacraments, 52. More recently, however, Barrett has written of this text: ‘This was, no doubt, a kind of ordination, in that it gave some Christians a special sort of responsibility and service…The word cheirotonein, however, implies nothing with regard to the imposition of hands’: Barrett, Acts I–XIV. (ICC). Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1994, 687.

21 R.E.Brown, however, thinks it probable that Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia in 1:1 refers not to the Roman provinces so named but to ‘more restricted regions or districts within those provinces reflecting ancient national origins…northern Asia is meant; and Paul had probably not been in that area’ (Brown, R.E., Introduction to the New Testament. Doubleday Image, 1997, 720Google Scholar).

22 R.E.Brown, Introduction, 722.

23 Their charges, hoi kleroi, may mean small groups of laity that they ministered to; it has been noted that 1QS 6.6 and CD 13:1–2 have every group often laypeople directed by a priest (or Levite).

24 See Barrett, Church, Ministry and Sacraments, 40–43. R.E.Brown thinks that 5:1 refers to ‘established presbyters, seemingly appointed and salaried’, but that the reference to ‘varied charisms’ in 4:10–11 suggests a ‘transitional period’ for composition, one before the writing of 1 Timothy (Brown, Introduction, 719). Presbyteroi are mentioned also in the Epistle of James (date and authorship uncertain): they anoint and pray over the sick (Jas 5:14). It is not clear whether they are office‐bearers or simply senior members of the congregation. Some commentators think that the ‘teachers’ of Jas 3:1 sound as if they may be office‐bearers.

25 2 Tim. 1:6 mentions also the laying‐on of hands, but I have argued [B.P.Robinson, ‘Paul's Character in the Face of Death (Phil. 2:17–18; 2 Tim. 4:6–8)’, Scripture Bulletin 28 (1998) 77–87, 78 n.8] that this should be interpreted differently, not in terms of the designation of office‐bearers, but of a prayer for divine blessing, as when (Acts 9:17) Ananias laid his hands on Paul (before the latter's baptism!) to give him recovery of sight and the gift of the Spirit, or as when (Acts 13:1–3) the prophets and teachers of Antioch (not presbyters!) laid their hands on Paul and Barnabas to designate them for their first missionary journey.

26 The term episkopos may be related to the Hebrew mebaqqer, the word for the Overseer or Guardian of the community in the Qumran Manual of Discipline and the Damascus Document.

27 See Niederwinner, N. (ed.), The Didache (Hermeneia). Minneapolis, Fortress, 1998Google Scholar, Introduction.

28 Probably there were two categories of ministers of the Eucharist in the church of the Didache, and the one category, that of the Prophets, as distinct from the episkopoi and presbyteroi, had the greater prestige because they were charismatics. So de Halleux, A., ‘Ministers in the Didache’, in Draper, J.A. (ed.), The Didache in Modern Research. Leiden, Brill, 1996, 300–320, 314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 ‘The idea that Timothy was bishop of Ephesus and Titus was bishop of Crete has no explicit basis in the Pastoral Epistles. Rather these men are pictured as delegates of the apostle checking on the authorities of the local churches’: R.E.Brown, Priest and Bishop, 35 n21.

30 Some have found it incredible that, given his high estimation of the monarchic episcopate, Ignatius would have had any time for the church of Rome if it had been governed by presbyters. It has been therefore been suggested by Peter Elliott that either the ‘see’ was vacant at the time of Ignatius’ letter, or Ignatius did not name the ‘bishop’ lest the publicity should expose him to persecution (letter, The Tablet, 12.ix. 1998, p.1184). Adrian Hastings has suggested that that, though Rome may not have had a monarchic episcopate, the presbyters will have claimed apostolic succession, and this will have been enough to satisfy Ignatius. He further suggests that Peter operated as one of the Roman presbyters (letter, The Tablet, 26.ix. 1998, p.1253; 17.x.98, p.1364).All this is highly speculative, especially the last idea, which arguably would reduce the Apostle Peter to a territorial leader (see Eamon Duffy, letter, The Tablet, 3.ix.98, p. 1283). Perhaps Ignatius’ view was that the emergence of episcopacy was providential; that in congregations where it had developed nothing should be done without the bishop (Smyrn. 8:1); but that churches which did not yet possess the institution were in no sense second‐class churches.

31 Bornkamm, G. in Friedrich, G. (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, tr. and ed. Bromiley, G.W., vol. VI. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1968, 651–83Google Scholar.

32 S.Brown, The Origins of Christianity. A Historical Introduction to the New Testament (The Oxford Bible Series). Oxford, c, OUP, 1984, 134.

33 On the figure of Peter in the New Testament see further Brown, R.E., Donfried, K.P., Reumann, J. (edd.), Peter in the New Testament. A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars. London, & G.Chapman, 1974Google Scholar; Perkins, P., Peter, Apostle for the Whole Church (Studies on Personalities of the New Testament). Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1994Google Scholar.

34 cf 2 Tim. 1:11, I was appointed as herald, apostle and teacher.

35 ‘The presbyter‐bishops of the Pastorals do not exercise a sacramental role’ (S.Brown, Origins, 148).