Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Number of quotes: 48
Book ID: 255 Page: 85
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.Now although the existence of such a general drift in contemporary organizations by no means proves that the Christian communities were borne along with it, still it establishes a basis of probability for the inference that communities which were so largely in harmony with those organizations in other respects, were in harmony with them also in this. The inference is strengthened by the fact that the localities in which there is the earliest contemporary evidence for the existence of a president, are also the localities in which the evidence for the existence of a president in other organizations is most complete. Both the one and the other are chiefly found in the great cities, and in the East even more than in the West.
Quote ID: 6407
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 86/87
Section: 2D1,2C
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.I. In the first place, there were some cases in which an Apostle had been supreme during his lifetime, and in which the tradition of personal supremacy lingered after his death; there were others in which the oversight of a community had been specially entrusted by an Apostle to some one officer; there were others in which special powers or special merits gave to some one man a predominant influence. Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, are examples of such cases. It is, indeed, wholly uncertain how far they are typical; and there is a probability that, where such supremacy existed, it was personal rather than official, inasmuch as those who exercised it do not appear to have had as such any distinguishing appellation. In later times they were entitled ‘bishops:’ the Clementines speak of James, ‘the Lord’s brother, as ‘archbishop’ and ‘bishop of bishops{3}:’ the subscriptions of some versions and late MSS. of the Pastoral Epistles speak of Timothy and Titus as ‘bishops’ respectively of Ephesus and Crete{4}: but there is no early evidence of the use of these titles in this relation{5}: and on the other hand Irenaeus calls Polycarp indifferently ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter{6}:’ and, what is even more significant in a formal letter to the head of the Roman Church, in which, from the circumstances of the case, he would be least likely to omit any form of either right or courtesy, he speaks of his predecessors by name as ‘presbyters{7}.’
[Footnote 3] Clementin. Recog. I. 73 ‘Jacobus archiepiscopus’ (so in later times, e.g. Conc. Ephes. c. 30 Greek needed here): Epist. Clem. ad Jacob. inscr. (Greek needed here).
[Footnote 4] The earliest MS. which does so is probably the Codex Coislensis of the sixth century: the version which does so is the Peschito: the statement which contains the word is omitted in the greater MSS. and in the early Latin versions.
[Footnote 5] The earliest use of the word with a definite reference to an individual is the inscription of the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp: (Greek needed here): but the absence of the definite article, and the inscription of Polycarp’s own letter, (Greek needed here), are inconsistent with the hypothesis that the word was already specially appropriated to the head of the community. The next earliest use of the word is probably in reference to Polycarp in the letter of Polycrates to Victor, ap. Euseb. H. E. 5.24. It is worthy of note, i. that these earliest uses are in reference to officers of the Asiatic Churches, i.e. in the neighborhood of communities in which (Greek needed here) was already a title of certain secular offices (see Lecture II, notes 26, 28): ii. that Hegesippus does not give any title to the heads of the Roman Church.
[Footnote 6] S. Iren. Epist. ad Florin. ap. Euseb. H. E. 5. 20. 7, (Greek needed here): adv. Haeres. 3. 3. 4 (Greek needed here).
[Footnote 7] S. Iren. Epist. ad Victor. ap. Euseb. H. E. 5. 24. 14 (Greek needed here). So late as the third century, the extant epitaphs of Roman bishops do not give the title episcopus : De Rossi, Bulletino di Archeologia Christ. ann. ii. 1864, p. 50.
Quote ID: 6408
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 88
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.It is a pure theocracy. In our Lord’s own lifetime He Himself had been the visible head of that Kingdom of Heaven which He preached : His Apostles had stood round Him as His ministers - the twelve heads and patriarchs of the tribes of the new Israel : the rest of the disciples - the new people of God - had listened and obeyed. So it was still : the bishop sat in the Lord’s place : the presbyters were what the Apostles had been : it was for the rest of the community to listen and to obey {8}. Upon this theory of ecclesiastical organization the existence of a president was a necessity : and the theory seems to go back to the very beginnings of the Christian societies.
[Footnote 8] S. Ignat. ad Magn. 6. I.
Quote ID: 6409
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 89
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.... the long-delayed Parousia seemed almost to vanish in the far horizon of the unrealized future, and the desolation of the royal city began to turn men’s thoughts from Jerusalem to Rome {12}.
[Footnote 12] The importance to the Christian Church of the fall of Jerusalem (for the completeness of which see especially Aristo ap. Euseb. H. E. 4. 6. 3, S. Hieron. Comm. in Sophon. c. I. 15, vol. vi. p. 692, ed. Vall., S. Greg. Nazianz. Orat. 6, c. 18, vol. i. p. 191, ed. Ben.) was to some extent recognized by Jerome (Epist. I 20 ad Hedib. c. 8, vol. I. p. 27), and has frequently been pointed out by modern writers, e.g. Gfrorer, Allgemeine Kirchengeschichte, Bd. I. p. 253, Rothe, Vorlesungen uber Kirchengeschichte, ed. Weingarten, Bd. I. pp. 75 sqq.
Quote ID: 6410
Time Periods: 35
Book ID: 255 Page: 90
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.... the bishops of the third and subsequent centuries claimed for themselves exceptional powers, and that the relation of primacy ultimately changed into a relation of supremacy.
Quote ID: 6411
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 90/92
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.... the works of Philo. To that school all facts past and present were an allegory. Nothing was what it seemed to be, but was the symbol of the unapparent. The history of the Old Testament was sublimated into a history of the emancipation of reason from passion. If Able was described as a keeper of sheep, the meaning was that moral wisdom keeps the irrational impulses under control {14}. If Israel was described as warring against Amalek, the meaning was that when reason lifts itself up away from earth, as Moses lifted up his hands, it is strengthened by the vision of God {15}. If Abraham was described as migrating from Chaldaea to Canaan, the meaning was that wisdom leaves the prejudices and crude ideas of its original state, and seeks a new home among the realities of abstract thought{16}. To those who thought thus, the records of the Gospels were so much new matter for allegorical interpretation. To the lower intelligence, to the eye of sense, Christ was a person who had lived and died and ascended : and the Christian communities were the visible assemblies of His followers : and the Christian virtues were certain habits of minds which showed themselves in deeds. But to the spiritual mind, to the eye of reason, all these things were like the phantasmagoria of the mysteries. The recorded deeds of Christ were the clash and play of mighty spiritual forces : the Christian Church was an emanation from God : the Christian virtues were phases of intellectual enlightenment which had but slender, if any, links with the deeds done in the flesh. Before long the circle widened in which Christian ideas were rationalized. Christianity found itself in contact not merely with mysteries but with metaphysics. But they were the metaphysics of ‘wonderland.’ Abstract conceptions seemed to take bodily shape, and to form strange marriages, and to pass in and out of one another like the dissolving scenery of a dream. ***There grew up a new mythology, in which Zeus and Aphrodite, Isis and Osiris, were replaced by Depth and Silence, Wisdom and Power. Christianity ceased to be a religion and became a theosophy.*** It ceased to be a doctrine and became a Platonic poem. It ceased to be a rule of life and became a system of the universe. It was transferred from the world of human actions in which it had seemed to have its birth into a supersensuous world of unimaginable vastness, and its truths were no longer fixed facts of faith and life, but the gorgeous, and shifting, and unsubstantial pageantry of the clouds of an autumn sky{17}.
[Footnote 14] Philo, I. p. 170, ed. Mang.
[Footnote 15] ibid. p. 124.
[Footnote 16] Philo, i. pp. 436, 437, ed. Mang.
[Footnote 17] The evidence for the opinions of the various schools of Gnostics has mostly to be gathered from the quotations of their writings by their opponents, especially Irenaeus and Hippolytus : the only complete Gnostic treatise which has come down to modern times is a late Valentinian work entitled (Greek needed here), of which the Coptic text, with a Latin translation, was published by Schwartz and Petermann in 1851. The modern literature of the subject is extensive : the first clear view was given by Baur, Die christliche Gnosis, and Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, Bd. i. (Eng. Trans. published in the Theological Translation Fund Library, 1878 pp. 184 sqq.) : the best general view is that of Lipsius in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgem. Encyclopadie, s. v. Gnosticismus, vol. lxxi. pp. 230 sqq. (since printed separately), and the most accurate of shorter summaries, with valuable bibliographical references, that of Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Eng. Trans. in the Theological and Philosophical Library, vol. i. pp. 280-290). English readers will also find some valuable information in Dean Mansel’s posthumous work, The Gnostic heresies of the first and second centuries, London, 1875, and in Dr. Salmon’s articles in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, especially s. v. Gnosticism : Mr. King’s The Gnostics and their remains, London, 1864, is useful for the information which it collects as to the Eastern affinities, and possible sources, of Gnosticism.
Quote ID: 6412
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 93
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.The problem arose and pressed for an answer - What should be the basis of Christian union? But the problem was for a time insoluble. For there was no standard and no court of appeal. It was useless to argue from the Scriptures that this or that system of philosophy was inconsistent with them, because one of the chief questions to be determined was whether the Scriptures did or did not admit of allegorical or philosophical interpretation.
Quote ID: 6413
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 94/96
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.The crisis was one the gravity of which it would be difficult to overestimate. There have been crises since in the history Christianity, but there is none which equals in importance this, upon the issue of which it depended, for all time to come, whether Christianity should be regarded as a body of revealed doctrine, or the caput mortuum of a hundred philosophies - whether the basis of Christian organization should be a definite and definitely interpreted creed, or a chaos of speculations....
Pastor John’s notes: The hope was in humans?!
Quote ID: 6414
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 95
Section: 2D1
Lecture IVThe form which the ‘common sense,’ so to speak, of Christendom took upon this great question is one which is so familiar to us that we find it difficult to go back to a time when it was not yet in being. Its first elaboration and setting forth was due to one man’s genius. With great rhetorical force and dialectical subtlety, Irenaeus, the bishop of the chief Christian Church in Gaul, maintained that the standard of Christian teaching was the teaching of the Churches which the Apostles had founded, - which teaching he held to be on all essential points the same{21}.
Pastor John’s notes: That nut was our hero?!
He maintained the existence, and he asserted the authority, of a fides catholica - the general belief of the Christian Churches - which was also the fides apostolica - the belief which the Apostles had taught{22}. To that fides catholica et apostolica all individual opinions and interpretations were to be referred : such as were in conformity with it were to be received as Christian, such as differed from it were (Greek word needed here) - not the general or traditional belief of the Christian Churches, but the belief of only a sect or party. In this view, which was already in the air, the Christian world gradually acquiesced : henceforth there was a standard of appeal : henceforth there was a definite basis of union.
Thus were the Christian communities saved from disintegration. Upon the basis of a Catholic and Apostolic faith was built the sublime superstructure of a Catholic and Apostolic Church{23}.
Quote ID: 6415
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 96
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.It might reasonably be supposed that in the Christian Churches there had been a similar tradition from one generation of officers to another : that, in other words, the Apostles had definitely taught those whom they had appointed, or recognized, as officers, and what had been so taught had been preserved by those who had succeeded those officers.
Pastor John’s notes: Not true
Quote ID: 6416
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 97
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.The necessity for unity was supreme : and the unity in each community must be absolute. But such an absolute unity could only be secured when the teacher was a single person.
Pastor John’s notes: Jesus!
Quote ID: 6417
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 97
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop....but in the course of the third century it seems to have won its way to general recognition. The supremacy of the bishop and unity of doctrine were conceived as going hand in hand : the bishop was conceived as having what Irenaeus calls the ‘charisma veritatis{26};’ the bishop’s seat was conceived as being, what St. Augustine calls it, the ‘cathedra unitatis{27};’
Quote ID: 6418
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 255 Page: 98
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.St. Jerome, arguing against the growing tendency to exalt the diaconate at the expense of the presbyterate, maintains that the Churches were originally governed by a plurality of presbyters, but that in course of time one was elected to preside over the rest as a remedy against division,
Quote ID: 6419
Time Periods: 35
Book ID: 255 Page: 99
Section: 4B
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.Early in the third century...Christianity was not illegal, and was tending to become fashionable.
Quote ID: 6420
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 102
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop....but it ultimately became so general that the bishops came to claim the right of readmitting penitents, not in their capacity as presidents of the community, but as an inherent function of the episcopate.
In this way it was that the supremacy of the bishops, which had been founded on the necessity for unity of doctrine, was consolidated by the necessity for unity of discipline.
Quote ID: 6421
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 255 Page: 102
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop....rule should grow up that there should be only one bishop in a community. The rule was not firmly established until the third century. Its general recognition was the outcome of the dispute between Cyprian and Novatian .
Quote ID: 6422
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 103/104
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop....there must be a mingling of good and bad, the puritan party resolved to have a bishop of their own, an elected Novatian. All the elements of a valid election were present. Under ordinary circumstances, or in a newly organized community, the election would have been unchallenged. There was only one point in which it was exceptional. That exceptional point was that Rome already possessed a complete organization. The question arose whether it was competent, under any circumstances, for a new organization to be established side by side with an existing organization in the same city. The question does not seem to have been raised before: and in Asia Minor, in Syria , and in Africa Novatian’s election was for a time held to be valid{41}. But, with the far-sightedness of a great politician, Cyprian saw the bearings of the question on Christian organization. He used the whole weight of his influence, and the whole force of his vehement rhetoric, to maintain that, the election of Cornelius having been valid, the election of Novatian was null. The controversy was keen, but in the end Cyprian prevailed. The necessity for unity outweighed all other considerations. Henceforth, whoever in any city claimed to be a member of the Christian Church must belong to the established organization of that city. The seamless coat of Christ must not be rent. As there was one God, and one Christ, and one Holy Spirit, so there could be but one bishop{42}.
Quote ID: 6423
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 105
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.[Footnote 47] The view that bishops, and not presbyters, are the successors of the Apostles, appears first by implication in the claim of Zephyrinus and Callistus, during the Montanist controversy, to have the power of absolving penitents from sin (Tertull. De Pudic. I : S. Hippol. IIaeres. 9. 12. p. 458), which appears to have been based on the assumption of their succession to S. Peter (Tertull. De Pudic. 21, where...
Quote ID: 6424
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 106
Section: 2D1
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop....the power of ‘binding and loosing,’ which our Lord had conferred on the Apostles, were given to them not personally or as constituting the Church of the time, but in a representative capacity as the first members of a long line of Church officers{48}. Against an early assertion of this view Tertullian raised a vigorous protest: not did the view win its way to general acceptance until the time of the great Latin theologians of the fifth century.
[Footnote 48] The contention of Tertullian (as a Montanist) was that the ‘power of the keys’ was personal to S. Peter (De Pudic. 21, quoted in preceding note).
Quote ID: 6425
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 255 Page: 119
Section: 2C
Lecture V: Clergy and Laity.The distinctions which St. Paul makes between Christians are based not upon office, but upon varieties of spiritual power. They are caused by the diversity of the operations of the Holy Spirit. They are consequently personal and individual.
. . . .
Some of these spiritual powers are distinguished from others by a greater visible and outward effect : but they are all the same in kind. The gift of ruling is not different in kind from the gift of healing. The expression ‘he that ruleth’ is coordinate with ‘he that exhorteth,’ ‘he that giveth,’ ‘he that sheweth mercy{16}.’
Quote ID: 6426
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 255 Page: 137
Section: 3A1,4B
Lecture V: Clergy and Laity.Civil order was conceived to be almost as divine as physical order is conceived to be in our own day. In the State, the head of the State seemed as such by virtue of his elevation to have some of the attributes of a divinity: and in the Church the same Apostolical Constitutions which give as the reason why a layman may not celebrate the Eucharist that he has not the necessary dignity (Greek word here), call the officer who has that dignity a ‘god upon earth{58}.’ When in the decay of the Empire, the ecclesiastical organization was left as the only stable institution, it was almost inevitable that those who preserved the tradition of imperial rule should, by the mere fact of their status, seem to stand upon a platform which was inaccessible to ordinary men.
Quote ID: 6427
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 255 Page: 141
Section: 2C
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.I. In the first place, the State conceded to the officers of the Christian Churches those immunities which were enjoyed by the heathen priesthood and by some of the liberal professions{4}.
Quote ID: 6428
Time Periods: 3456
Book ID: 255 Page: 143/144
Section: 3A4A,3C
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.But under the vicious system of the later Empire they were an almost intolerable burden. The magistrates were charged with the collection of the revenue, and, the quota of each municipality being fixed, they had to make up the deficit–in days in which deficits were chronic–out of their private resources{10}. The holding of office consequently involved in some cases an almost ruinous expenditure. It was a heavy and unequal tax upon property. An addition to the number of those who were exempt from it added to its oppressiveness and its inequality. It had also another result, it added to the number of claimants for admission to the privileged class. When the officers of Christian Churches were exempted, many persons whose fortunes were large enough to render them liable to the burden of municipal offices, sought and obtained admission to the ranks of the clergy, with the view of thereby escaping their liability. The exemption had barely been half-a-dozen years in operation before the Emperor found it necessary to guard it with important limitations{11}. These limitations were, for the most part, in the direction of prohibiting those who were liable to municipal burdens from being appointed to ecclesiastical office.
Quote ID: 6429
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 255 Page: 146/147
Section: 3A1,4B
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.At first the rule that all causes in which officers of the Churches were concerned should be decided by the Churches themselves was permissive{16}. But at last it became compulsory{17}.
. . . .
...and so began that long struggle between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Church officers, which forms so important an element in mediaeval history, and which has not altogether ceased in our own times{19}.
The joint effect of these exemptions from public burdens, and from ordinary courts, was the creation of a class civilly distinct from the rest of the community. This is the first element in the change which we are investigating : the clergy came to have a distinct civil status.
Quote ID: 6430
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 255 Page: 149/151
Section: 3C,3A3,4B
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.Into this primitive state of things the State introduced a change.
I. It allowed the Churches to hold property{25}. And hardly had the holding of property become possible before the Church became a kind of universal legatee. The merit of bequeathing property to the Church was preached with so much success that restraining enactments became necessary. Just as the State did not abolish, though it found it necessary to limit, its concession of exemption to Church officers, so it pursued the policy of limiting rather than of abolishing the right to acquire property{26}. ‘I do not complain of the law,’ says Jerome, writing on this point, ‘but of the causes which have rendered the law necessary{27}.’
2. The enthusiasm, or the policy, of Constantine went considerably beyond this. He ordered that not only the clergy but also the widows and orphans who were on the Church-roll should receive fixed annual allowances{28} : he endowed some Churches with fixed revenues chargeable upon the lands of the municipalities{29} : in some cases, he gave to churches the rich revenues or the splendid buildings of heathen temples{30}.
This is the second element in the change : the clergy became not only independent, but in some cases wealthy. In an age of social decay and struggling poverty they had not only enough but to spare.
. . . .
The effect of the recognition of Christianity by the State was thus not only to create a class civilly distinct from the rest of the community, but also to give that class social independence. In other words, the Christian clergy, in addition to their original prestige as office-bearers, had the privileges of a favoured class, and the power of a moneyed class.
Quote ID: 6431
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 255 Page: 153
Section: 2E2,2D1
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.2. Side by side with it, but for the first three centuries confined to a still smaller number of persons{37}, was the tendency to live in partial or total isolation from society.
This, like the ascetic tendency, was not confined to Christianity. It had already taken an important place in the religions of both Egypt and the East.
In Egypt there had been for several centuries a great monastery of those who were devoted to the worship of the deity whom the Greeks called Serapis. The monks, like Christian monks, lived in a vast common building, which they never left:
Quote ID: 6432
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 255 Page: 155
Section: 2E2
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.But great enthusiasms are never adequately explained by external causes. No torch would have kindled so great a conflagration if the fuel had not been already gathered together for the burning. The causes of the sudden outburst of monasticism in the fourth century must be sought, and can be found, within Christianity itself. They lie in the general conditions of the age.
Quote ID: 6433
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 255 Page: 156
Section: 2E2
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.The age of martyrdoms had ceased, but the spirit of the martyrs began to live again. For martyrdom had been in many cases the choice of a sublime enthusiasm. There had been men and women who, so far from shrinking from it, had sought and welcomed the occasion of it{44}. They had ‘counted it all joy to suffer for His name’s sake.’ All this had come to a sudden end. Persecution had ceased. But the idea of the merit of suffering had not ceased. There were those who, if they could not be martyrs in act, would at least be martyrs in will (Greek words needed here){45}. They sought lives of self-mortification. They would themselves torture the flesh which the lictors would no longer scourge. They would construct for themselves the prisons which no longer kept Christian confessors for the lion.
Quote ID: 6434
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 255 Page: 158
Section: 2E2
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class....but when the Arians set themselves to persecute monasticism, by a remarkable rebound of feeling, monasticism became a protest of catholicity against Arianism{48}.
Quote ID: 6435
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 255 Page: 159
Section: 2C
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.The legislation which affected social life began by excluding clergy from the amusements of life, and went on gradually to exclude them from its ordinary pursuits, and at last, though not for some centuries, clenched the distinction by requiring them to wear a special dress{51}.
[Footnote 51] There are many injunctions to the clergy in earlier centuries to use modest and becoming dress : but there is probably no direct enactment as to the form of dress which the clergy should wear in ordinary life earlier than the Capitulary of Karloman in 742.
Quote ID: 6436
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 255 Page: 160/161
Section: 3A1,3D2
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.All this was intensified by the decay and fall of the Roman Empire. When the surging tides of barbarian invasion swept over Europe, the Christian organization was almost the only institution of the past which survived the flood. It remained as a visible monument of what had been, and, by so remaining, was of itself an antithesis to the present. The chief town of the Roman province, whatever its status under barbarian rule, was still the bishop’s see. The limits of the old ‘province,’ though the boundary of a new kingdom might bisect them, were still the limits of his diocese. The bishop’s tribunal was the only tribunal in which the laws of the Empire could be pleaded in their integrity. The bishop’s dress was the ancient robe of a Roman magistrate. The ancient Roman language which was used in the Church services was a standing protest against the growing degeneracy of the ‘vulgar tongue.’ These survivals of the old world which was passing away gave to the Christian clergy a still more...
Pastor John’s comment: Wow
. . . .
To the ‘pagani’ of Gaul and Spain, to the Celtic inhabitants of our own islands, and, in rather later times, to the Teutonic races of Central Europe, they were probably never known except as a special class, assuming a special status, living a special life, and invested with special powers.
Quote ID: 6437
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 255 Page: 161/162
Section: 2D1
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.The first book of the Apostolical Constitutions exhorts all Christians to trim their hair becomingly{54}:
. . . .
But, as in other cases, that which had been a primitive rule for all Christians became in time a special rule for the clergy. They must not either shave their heads like the priests of Isis{57}, nor let their hair grow long like heathen philosophers. Then came a more exact and stringent rule : they must not only trim their hair, but trim it in a particular way. The trimming of the hair in this particular way became one of the ceremonies of admission to ecclesiastical office : and, throughout both East and West, clerks became differentiated from laymen by the ‘tonsure{58}.’
Quote ID: 6438
Time Periods: 247
Book ID: 255 Page: 168
Section: 3C,3A1
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.But no sooner had Christianity been recognized by the State than such conferences tended to multiply, to become not occasional but ordinary, and to pass resolutions which were regarded as binding upon the Churches within the district from which representatives had come, and the acceptance of which was regarded as a condition of intercommunion with the Churches of other provinces. There were strong reasons of imperial policy for fostering this tendency. It was clearly advisable that the institutions to which a new status had been given should be homogeneous. It was clearly contrary to public policy that not only status but also funds should be given to a number of communities which had no other principle of cohesion than that of a more or less undefined unity of belief{9}.
[Footnote 9] A law of Constantine in A. D. 326, Cod. Theodos. 16. 5. I, confines the privileges and immunities which had been granted to Christians to ‘catholicae legis observatoribus.’
Quote ID: 6440
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 255 Page: 170
Section: 2C,3A1
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.These latter were held upon a strictly local basis : they followed the lines of the civil assemblies whose ordinary designation they appropriated. They followed them also in meeting in the metropolis of the province. The bishop of that metropolis was their ordinary president : in this respect there was a difference between the civil and the ecclesiastical assemblies, for in the former the president was elected from year to year. In this way the bishop of the metropolis came to have a preeminence over the other bishops of a province. By a natural process, just as the vote and sanction of a bishop had become necessary to the validity of the election of a presbyter, so the vote and sanction of a metropolitan became necessary to the validity of the election of a bishop{14}. In time a further advance was made. Just as civil provinces were grouped into dioceses, and the governors of a ‘province’ were subordinated to the governor of a ‘diocese,’ so a gradation was recognized between the bishop of the chief city of a province and the bishop of the chief city of a diocese. In both cases the civil names were retained : the former were called metropolitans, the latter exarchs or patriarchs{15}.
Quote ID: 6441
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 255 Page: 171
Section: 3A1,3A2A
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.When the Churches of a province, and still more when the Churches of the greater part of the Empire, were linked together by the ties of a confederation, meeting in common assembly, and agreeing upon a common plan of action, exclusion by a single Church came to mean exclusion from all the confederated Churches{16}.
Quote ID: 6442
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 255 Page: 172
Section: 3A2A
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.The observance of the rule was fenced round by the further enactment that no one should be received into another Church without a letter from the bishop of the Church to which he belonged{20}. In primitive days, a Christian who travelled, or who changed his residence from one town to another, was received into communion with but little question : but the interests of social order, no less than of faith, compelled a change.
Quote ID: 6443
Time Periods: 145
Book ID: 255 Page: 173
Section: 3A2A
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.Now as long as Christians were in a great minority, a man might be cut off from social intercourse with them without sustaining any serious social loss. But when Christians began to be a majority in all the great centres of population, excommunication became a real deterrent, and consequently a powerful instrument in the hands of those who were desirous of tightening the bonds of association.
And yet it is doubtful whether it would have been a sufficiently powerful instrument to produce the uniformity which ultimately prevailed, if the State had not interfered. The associated Churches might have been strong enough to crush isolated individuals, but it may be questioned whether they could have held their ground, without State interference, against whole Churches or a combination of Churches.
Quote ID: 6444
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 255 Page: 174/175
Section: 3A1,3C
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.Even before Christianity had been recognized by the State, when Paul of Samosata refused to give up possession of the Church-buildings at Antioch, and claimed still to be the bishop of the Church, there were no means of ejecting him except that of an appeal to the Emperor Aurelian{22}. A number of such Churches might join together and form a rival association. In one important case this was actually done. A number of Churches in Africa held that the associated Churches were too lax in their terms of communion. How far they were right in the particular points which they urged cannot now be told{23}. But the contention was for purity. The seceding Churches were rigorists. Their soundness in the faith was unquestionable{24}. They resolved to meet together as a separate confederation, the basis of which should be a greater purity of life; and but for the interference of the State they might have lasted as a separate confederation to the present day. The interference of the State was not so much a favour shown to the bishops who asked for it as a necessary continuation of the policy which Constantine had begun.
. . . .
it was impossible for the State to assume the office of determining for itself what was and what was not Christian doctrine. It was enough for the State that a great confederation of Christian societies existed.
Quote ID: 6445
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 255 Page: 176
Section: 3A1,3C
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.(3) The State discouraged and ultimately prohibited the formation of new associations outside the general confederation. ‘Let all heresies,’ says a law of Gratian and Valentinian, ‘for ever hold their peace: if any one entertains an opinion which the Church has condemned let him keep it to himself and not communicate it to another {27}.’
PJ: A major development. = no groups of congregations were legitimate outside the Roman Catholic faith.
Quote ID: 6446
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 255 Page: 177/178
Section: 1A,2C,3A1,3C
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.In this way it was that, by the help of the State, the Christian Churches were consolidated into a great confederation. Whatever weakness there was in the bond of a common faith was compensated for by the strength of civil coercion. But that civil coercion was not long needed. For the Church outlived the power which had welded it together. As the forces of the Empire became less and less, the forces of the Church became more and more. The Churches preserved that which had been from the first the secret of Imperial strength. For underneath the Empire which changed and passed, beneath the shifting pageantry of Emperors who moved across the stage and were seen no more, was the abiding empire of law and administration, – which changed only as the deep sea changes beneath the wind-swept waves. That inner empire was continued in the Christian Churches. In the years of transition from the ancient to the modern world, when all civilized society seemed to be disintegrated, the confederation of the Christian Churches, by the very fact of its existence upon the old imperial lines, was not only the most powerful, but the only powerful organization in the civilized world.
. . . .
This confederation, and no other, was the ‘city of God;’ this, and no other, was the ‘body of Christ;’ this, and no other, was the ‘Holy Catholic Church.’
Quote ID: 6447
Time Periods: 147
Book ID: 255 Page: 184
Section: 3A1,3C
Lecture VIIIn the third period, insistence on Catholic faith had led to the insistence on Catholic order – for without order, dogma had no guarantee of permanence. Consequently the idea of unity of organization was superimposed upon that of unity of belief. It was held not to be enough for a man to be living a good life, and to hold the Catholic faith and to belong to a Christian association: that association must be part of a larger confederation, and the sum of such confederations constituted the Catholic Church{44}.
This last is the form which the conception of unity took in the fourth century, and which to a great extent has been permanent ever since.
Quote ID: 6448
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 255 Page: 185
Section: 3A1,2C,3C
Lecture VII‘Your Catholic Church,’ they said to their opponents, ‘is a geographical expression: it means the union of so many societies in so many provinces or in so many nations: our Catholic Church is the union of all those who are Christians in deed as well as in word: it depends not upon intercommunion, but upon the observance of all the divine commands and Sacraments: it is perfect, and it is immaculate’ {47}.
The Donatists were crushed: but they were crushed by the State. They had resisted State interference: Quid Imperatori cum ecclesia? They asked {48}. But the Catholic party had already begun its invocation of the secular power: and the secular power made ecclesiastical puritanism a capital crime{49}.
Quote ID: 6449
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 255 Page: 187
Section: 1A,2D3B,2A6
Lecture VIIThere are some who will look back with lingering eyes at that earlier time in which there was no formal association of Churches, but only what Tertullian calls the ‘communication of peace, the appellation of brotherhood, the token of hospitality, and the tradition of a single creed’ {50}. There are some who will think that the effect of the enormous power which the Roman Empire in the first instance, and the fall of the Roman Empire in the second instance, gave to the association has been to exaggerate its importance, and to make men forget that there is a deeper unity than that of external form.
For the true communion of Christian men – the ‘communion of saints’ upon which all Churches are built – is not the common performance of external acts, but a communion of soul with soul and of the soul with Christ. It is a consequence of the nature which God has given us that an external organization should help our communion with one another: it is a consequence both of our twofold nature, and of Christ’s appointment that external acts should help our communion with Him.
Pastor John’s note: Wow
Quote ID: 6450
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 255 Page: 195
Section: 2C,3A2A
Lecture VIII(4) Another group of circumstances was that of the great estates, upon which many Christians were resident, but which probably lay outside the jurisdiction of the municipal magistrates {14}. The fact that the owner was supreme, and that all others who lived on an estate were either serfs or slaves, probably prevented the free growth of that kind of organization which had come to exist elsewhere. The owner seems to have appointed church officers as he would have appointed farm-bailiffs. He could do so of his own mere motion, without regard to the ecclesiastical organization of any other place, because there was no one whose rights were thereby touched. Dioceses in the later sense of the term did not yet exist, and the system of subordinating one community to another had hardly begun.
. . . .
. . . .a limitation of the rights of owners in this respect became necessary in the interests of orthodoxy: and the imperial legislation, with its usual support of the Catholic party, enacted that any presbyter who was appointed to minister on an estate should first be approved by the bishop of the neighbouring city {16}. This enactment seems to have been evaded by ceasing to appoint presbyters. The imperial legislation consequently interfered again, and prohibited laymen from meeting for public worship without the presence of an authorized office {17}.
Quote ID: 6451
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 255 Page: 196
Section: 3A4B
Lecture VIII(5) The circumstances out of which the modern Parish was more directly produced were those of Gaul and Spain. The original Christians of those great provinces of the West seem to have consisted almost entirely of inhabitants of the Roman towns.
. . . .
So closely did the ecclesiastical organization follow the civil organization, and so firm was its hold upon society, that in the France of the present day, with hardly an exception, there is a bishop wherever there was a Roman municipality, and an archbishop wherever there was a provincial metropolis {19}. As the municipal organization became weak the ecclesiastical organization became strong: Christianity was so enormous a factor in contemporary society, that the bishops gradually took the place of the Roman magistrate and exercised some of the civil jurisdiction which had belong to him.
Quote ID: 6452
Time Periods: 457
Book ID: 255 Page: 208
Section: 1A,3A1,4B
Lecture VIIIAnd here the examination which I proposed at starting comes to an end.
The main propositions in which the results of that examination may be summed up are two-
(1) That the development of the organization of the Christian Churches was gradual:
(2) That the elements of which that organization were composed were already existing in human society.
These propositions are not new: they are so old as to have been, in greater or less degree, accepted by all ecclesiastical historians.
. . . .
But in dealing with them I have arrived at and set forth the view, in regard to the first of them, that the development was slower than has sometimes been supposed, and, in regard to the second, that not only some but all the elements of the organization can be traced to external sources. The difference between this view and the common view is one of degree and not of kind.
Quote ID: 6453
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 255 Page: 209
Section: 1A
Lecture VIIIWhat the theologian says to the man of science in regard to that Creation is, ‘Nothing that you have proved, or can prove, about the mode in which God made the world, interferes with the truth that He did make it:’ and what the theologian says also to the historian is, ‘Nothing that you have shown, or can show, about the mode in which the organization of the Church was developed interferes with the truth that God did organize it.’
Quote ID: 6454
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 255 Page: 218
Section: 5D
Lecture VIIITo you and me and men like ourselves is committed, in these anxious days, that which is at once an awful responsibility and a splendid destiny – to transform this modern world into a Christian society, to change the socialism which is based on the assumption of clashing interests into the socialism which is based on the sense of spiritual union, and to gather together the scattered forces of a divided Christendom into a confederation in which organization will be of less account than fellowship with one Spirit and faith in one Lord – into a communion wide as human life and deep as human need – into a Church which shall outshine even the golden glory of its dawn by the splendour of its eternal noon.
Quote ID: 6455
Time Periods: ?
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