6-1. The Organization of the Church
CHRISTIAN organisation was the means of expressing that which is behind and beneath all its details, namely the underlying and penetrating consciousness of the oneness of the Christian body and the Christian life. It was the process by which the separate charismata could be developed and differentiated, while at the same time the unity of the whole was safeguarded. Looked at in this light, the history of organisation in the Christian Church is, in its main stream, the history of two processes, partly successive, partly simultaneous, but always closely related: the process by which the individual communities became complete in themselves, sufficient for their own needs, microcosms of the Church at large; and the process by which the communities thus organised as units proceeded to combine in an always more formal and more extensive federation.
But these two processes were not merely successive. Just as there never had been a time when the separate communities, before they became fully organised, were devoid of outside ministration or supervision, so there never came a period when the fully organised communities lived only to themselves: unity was preserved by informal means, till the growing size and number of the communities, and the increasing complexity of circumstances, made informal means inadequate and further formal organisation imperative. And again, though the formal self-expression of the individual community necessarily preceded the formal self-expression of the federation of communities, yet the history of organisation within the single community does not come to an abrupt end as soon as the community becomes complete in itself: all functions essential for the Christian life are henceforth there, but as numbers increase and needs and duties multiply, the superabundant vitality of the organism shews itself in the differentiation of new, though always subordinate, functions.
And therefore, side by side with the well-known history of the federation of the Christian churches, it will be our business to trace also the obscurer and less recognised, but perhaps not less important, processes which were going on, simultaneously with the larger processes of federation, in the individual churches and especially in those of them which were most influential as models to the rest.
(A) In the early days of Christianity the first beginnings of a new community were of a very simple kind: indeed the local organisation had at first no need to be anything but rudimentary, just because the community was never thought of as complete in itself apart from its apostolic founder or other representatives of the missionary ministry. Presbyters and deacons no doubt existed in these communities from the first: presbyters were ordained for each church as it was founded on St Paul's first missionary journey; bishops and deacons constitute, together with the “holy people,” the church of Philippi. These purely local officials were naturally chosen from among the first converts in each district, and to them were naturally assigned the duties of providing for the permanently recurring needs of Christian life, especially the sacraments of Baptism — St Paul indicates that baptism was not normally the work of an apostle — and the Eucharist. But the evidence of the earlier epistles of St Paul is decisive as to the small relative importance which this local ministry enjoyed : the true ministry of the first generation was the ordered hierarchy, “first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers,” of which the apostle speaks with such emphasis in his first epistle to the Corinthians.
Next in due order after the ranks of the primary ministry came the gifts of miracles — “then powers, then gifts of healing” — and only after these, wrapped up in the obscure designation of “helps and governments,” can we find room for the local service of presbyters and deacons. Even without the definite evidence of the Acts and the Pastoral Epistles and St Clement of Rome it would be already clear enough that the powers of the local ministry were narrowly limited, and that to the higher ministry, the exercise of whose gifts was not confined to any one community but was independent of place altogether, belonged not only the general right of supervision and ultimate authority over local churches, but also in particular the imparting of the gift of the Spirit, whether in what we call Confirmation or in what we call Ordination.
In effect the Church of the first age may almost be said to have consisted of a laity grouped in local communities, and a ministry that moved about from place to place to do the work of missionaries to the heathen and of preachers and teachers to the converts. Most of St Paul's epistles to churches are addressed to the community, the holy people, the brethren, without any hint in the title of the existence of a local clergy: the apostle and the Christian congregation are the two factors of primary account. The Didache shews us how right down to the end of the first century, in remoter districts, the communities depended on the services of wandering apostles, or of prophets and teachers, sometimes wandering sometimes settled, and how they held by comparison in very light esteem their presbyters and deacons. Even a well-established church, like that of Corinth, with half a century of history behind it, was able, however unreasonably, to refuse to recognise in its local ministry any right of tenure other than the will of the community: and when the Roman church intervened to point out the gravity of the blow thus struck at the principle of Christian order, it was still the community of Rome which addressed the community of Corinth. And this custom of writing in the name, or to the address, of the community continued, a relic of an earlier age, well into the days of the strictest monarchical episcopacy: it was not so much the bishop's headship of the community as the multiplication of the clergy which (as we shall see) made the real gap between the bishop and his people.
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