abstract principle. In respect of almost all that has been hitherto said, the constitution of the Church may be conceived of either as episcopal or presbyterian: but whatever it be, as far as concerns the forms or distinctions of Orders, I must submit that the evidence of the scriptural quotations given above, linked as they are to the subsequent course of Church history by the massive authority of the Church of Rome, speaking within the first century in the person of St. Clement, makes sufficiently clear to us the meaning of the principle, which since the days of St. Clement has never been successfully challenged in the Church; the principle, namely, that ministerial validity is provided for, on the human and material side, and in that sense is dependent upon, a continuity of orderly appointment and institution, received in each generation from those who themselves had been authorized to institute by the institution of those before them; that is, on analysis, by uninterrupted transmission of authority from the men whose own title to authority was that they too were 'Apostles,'' sent' by Him who, even Himself, was 'sent' to be the Christ1. 1 The word Apostle is itself used of Him in Hebrews iii. 1. NOTE, p. 108. THOSE Who, in protest against the idea that it was St. Paul's ordination to apostleship, would make least of the ceremony of Acts xiii. 3, can hardly, with reason, bring it down to the level of a service of benediction for a particular enterprise only. It seems anyhow to be unique in St. Paul's life, and to stand in marked relation with his entry upon formal apostolic work. CHAPTER V GRADATIONS OF MINISTRY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT WHAT has been said hitherto has been said of the general idea of ministry. We pass now to what is really quite a different department, the question of distinctions of ministerial office. Obviously we begin with the New Testament. What then is the evidence which meets us within the pages of the New Testament itself as to ministerial distinctions in the Church of Christ? I. First and foremost, on every principle, stands the apostolate. The original basis of the apostolic distinction is found in the solemn selection by our Lord of twelveof His disciples, to whom He gave 'authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.' But this, however significant of their essential relation to Himself, and of the authority which should inhere, by virtue of that relation, in apostleship, is itself as yet only preliminary and tentative. For the full apostolate, in its Pentecostal sense, our Lord's personal training of His selected disciples would be gradual and complete. Whatever aspect such a fact may give to the subsequent apostolate of St. Matthias or St. Paul1, or whatever (in the 1 But St. Matthias was expressly chosen out of the men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto the day that He was received up from us' (Acts i. 21); and even St. Paul connects his claim to apostleship expressly with the thought of having seen Jesus Christ our Lord' (1 Cor. ix. I; xv. 8). case of St. Paul at least) may have been the exceptional compensation for this gradual shaping of character under the hand of Christ, of the fact itself there can be no question whatever. It is perhaps not always remembered quite as clearly as it deserves to be that the real lessons in pastoral training within the New Testament are not to be found nearly so much in the so-called Pastoral Epistles, which are (by comparison) accidental and accessory, as in the four Gospels, in the history of the companionship of the chosen disciples with their Lord 1. The apostolate then was already formed and fashioned for the Church before the Church began, at Pentecost, to be alive. Church without apostolate never existed for a moment. If it might be thought an exaggeration to say that the Church without the apostolate would be inconceivable; at all events it is true to say that from the Church as it is sketched in fact, whether in the early records or in the apocalyptic visions of the New Testament, the apostolate is altogether inseparable. Of apostolate, the fundamental character and warrant is before us in the words already referred to, in St. John: 'Peace be unto you. . . . Peace be unto you as the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained?' 1 This is the thought which is worked out with so much valuable detail in Mr. Latham's Pastor Pastorum. 2 John xx. 19-23. Dr. Hort, in reference to this passage, writes as follows:-[Ecclesia, pp. 32-34.] 'Much stress is often laid on the supposed evidence afforded by the words of the evangelists that they [i. e. the words in Matt. xxviii. 16-20 and John xx. 19-23] were addressed exclusively to the Apostles. Dr. Westcott has shown how, when we look below the surface, indications are not wanting that others were not improbably likewise present, at all events on the With the words of this awful commission we may set the record also of His parting utterances: 'These are My occasion recorded by St. John, when his narrative is compared with that of St. Luke (xxiv. 33 ff.). 'But in such a matter the mere fact that doubt is possible is a striking one. It is in truth difficult to separate these cases from the frequent omission of the evangelists to distinguish the Twelve from other disciples; a manner of language which, as we have seen, explains itself at once when we recognize how large a part discipleship played in the functions of the Twelve. 'Granting that it was probably to the Eleven that our Lord directly and principally spoke on both these occasions (and even to them alone when He spoke the words at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel), yet it still has to be considered in what capacity they were addressed by Him. If at the Last Supper, and during the discourses which followed, when the Twelve or Eleven were most completely secluded from all other disciples as well as from the unbelieving Jews, they represented the whole Ecclesia of the future, it is but natural to suppose that it was likewise as representatives of the whole Ecclesia of the future, whether associated with other disciples or not, that they had given to them those two assurances and charges of our Lord, about the receiving of the Holy Spirit and the remitting or retaining of sins (howsoever we understand these words), and about His universal authority in heaven and on earth, on the strength of which He bids them bring all the nations into discipleship, and assures them of His own presence with them all the days even to the consummation of the age.' : Dr. Hort's apparent drift is (1) to minimize the distinction between the Apostles and other Christians; and (2) to suggest that the charge in verses 21-23, if spoken 'directly and principally' to the Apostles, was not spoken to them in any exclusive sense and it is apparently in reliance upon this that he afterwards says, 'There is indeed, as we have seen, no trace in Scripture of a formal commission of authority for government from Christ Himself [to the Apostles]' (p. 84). I cannot but submit that this is quite the wrong way of putting it. To say indeed that the commission of authority for government formally given to them was given to them not exclusively but representatively, that is, to them as representing the Church, and as ordained to exercise ministerially the authority of the Church, is the very view which the previous chapters have endeavoured to explain. So far as Dr. Hort is feeling after this, we shall fully sympathize with him. But this view, instead of denying, presupposes, and instead of explaining away, bases itself upon, a real commission of authority for government, delivered to the Apostles as representing the Church, and delivered to the Church to be administered through the Apostles-and through those after them who should in other generations be similarly 'sent.' Does Dr. Hort really mean that the Church was anarchical? or that the powers spoken of in the text could be exercised by, or through, any one? or that the ministerial distinction of Apostles, if it existed, depended upon anything else except the selection, and preparation, and commission of Jesus Christ? I cannot but submit that the view given in the previous chapters is what he ought to mean, and that he has no right to mean more. Upon this view it is not very material whether words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning Me. Then opened He their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures; and He said unto them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Ye are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send forth the promise of My Father upon you but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high'.' 'All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and low, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world".' 'He was received up, after that He had given commandment through the Holy Ghost unto the Apostles whom He had chosen to whom He also showed Himself alive after His passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God and, being assembled together with them, He : others besides the Apostles were present or no; though we certainly cannot suppose (in Dr. Hort's phrase) that such others were included 'directly' or 'principally' within the scope of Christ's words. See more particularly Canon Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 229, n. 4. It certainly would seem to be the truth de facto, that from the time when that commission was given (whether you like to say 'to the Apostles' or 'to the Church') (1) there was an order of men, distinguished as áróσтoλoι, who did in fact, both corporately and individually, exercise such a ministerial power of binding and loosing; and (2) that no others ever did so-save as the 'Amen' to the Apostles-except in virtue of authority understood to be delegated and derived to them from Apostles. 1 Luke xxiv. 44-49. 2 For an (indirect) comment upon the word 'therefore in this context, compare Milligan's Ascension, p. 198 sqq. 3 Matt. xxviii. 18-20. I |