Priest and Bishop (Biblical Reflections)
Raymond E. Brown, S.S.
Number of quotes: 5
Book ID: 184 Page: 16
Section: 2C
There is not proof that the Christian communities who broke the eucharistic bread after the resurrection would have thought that they were offering sacrifices. In these observations I am not questioning the legitimacy of the development in later theology whereby the Church came to understand the Eucharist as a sacrifice. . . .
I am simply pointing out that such a theology was a post-NT development, and so we have no basis for assuming that early Christians would have considered as a priest the one who presided at the eucharistic meal.
Quote ID: 4092
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 184 Page: 18/19
Section: 2A2,2C
But there still had to be a second development before the emergence of the concept of a special Christian priesthood: Christianity had to have a sacrifice at which a priesthood could preside. This second condition was fulfilled when the Eucharist was seen as an unbloody sacrifice replacing the bloody sacrifices no longer offered in the now-destroyed Temple. This attitude appears in Christian writings about the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd. Didache 14 instructs Christians: “Assemble on the Lord’s Day, breaking bread and celebrating the Eucharist; but first confess your sins that your sacrifice thysia may be a pure one. . . .For it was of this that the Lord spoke, ‘Everywhere and always offer me a pure sacrifice.’” The citation is from Mal 1:10-11, a passage which became a very important factor in the Christian understanding of the Eucharist.. . . .
At about the same time, in his plea that Christian liturgical offerings and services should be structured, Clement of Rome (I Clem 40) calls on the analogy of the OT structure of high priest, priests, and levites.
Quote ID: 4093
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 184 Page: 40/41
Section: 2A6
Paul never mentions that he presided at the Eucharist, …. {24}. . . .
[Footnote 24] The fact that Paul mentions the Eucharist in only one of his letters (I Cor 10:16-17; 11: 23-34) weakens the force of the silence in his case. Yet it is worth noting that in the eighteen months that he was in Corinth (Acts18:11), he seems to have baptized only two people and a household (I Cor 1: 14-15). Evidently he was not primarily involved in administering sacraments.
. . . .
In point of fact, however, in the NT we are never told that any of them actually presided at the Eucharist.
Quote ID: 4094
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 184 Page: 53/54
Section: 2D1
The latest detailed work on the subject 35 maintains: That Peter founded the Church at Rome is extremely doubtful and that he served as its first bishop (as we understand the term today) for even one year, much less the twenty-five-year period that is claimed for him, is an unfounded tradition that can be traced back to a point no earlier than the third century. The liturgical celebrations which relate to the ascent of Peter to the Roman episcopacy do not begin to make their appearance until the fourth century at the earliest. Furthermore, there is no mention of the Roman episcopacy of Peter in the New Testament, I Clement, or the epistles of Ignatius. The tradition is only dimly discerned in Hegesippus and may be implied in the suspect letter of Dionysius of Corinth to the Romans ca. 170. By the third century, however, the early assumptions based upon invention or vague, unfounded tradition have been transformed into “facts” of history.
Quote ID: 4095
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 184 Page: 73
Section: 2C
And so the affirmation that all the bishops of the early Christian Church could trace their appointments or ordinations to the apostles is simply without proof.
Quote ID: 4096
Time Periods: 12
End of quotes