Ordination in the New Testament

The specific terminology of ordination is not found in the New Testament, although several occasions are described on which people were set aside for special tasks of ministry. A fuller development of the theory of ordination took place in the post-New Testament church.

Ministry Differentiation in the New Testament

The present state of scholarship demands great caution in speaking about ordination, its meaning, or its rites in the New Testament. The words ordain and ordination are not found there, and there is considerable disagreement about the extent to which this later Christian use may coincide with the categories of the New Testament and with its pattern, or varied patterns, of understanding, vocabulary, and practice.

Evidence suggests that the church had both unity and differentiation from the beginning. There is equality based on baptism, equality that nevertheless requires authority, leadership, that is structured and maintained as a unity through special ministers. Ministry rather than order or status is the predominant emphasis: a mission to be accomplished, a task to be done, rather than a class to be entered or status to be attained. These differences should not be exaggerated; ministry may well involve position, and a mission may carry with it or may require a certain personal status, and ministers may be grouped together because of the nature of their function.

Ministry does not arise merely out of sociological pressure; its necessity is found at a deeper level in the person and mission of Jesus Christ. The entire ministry is ultimately the work of God (1 Cor. 12:6), the gift of Christ (Eph. 4:7–12), and of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4–11; cf. Acts 20:28) in and through and for the church, the body of Christ. The most important forms of ministry can be characterized as those of leadership: preaching the gospel and founding new churches, supervising and nurturing the growth of the young churches, leading the communities as they become established. This ministry of leadership manifests itself in a variety of activities: instruction, encouragement, reproof, visitation, appointment, and supervision of some ministries, and so on—all that is demanded by the task of building up the body of Christ.

Procedures for Designation of Leadership

Scholars are not agreed about the manner in which Christian positions of leadership came into being in the early church. The recent trend has been toward the view that leaders emerged or were appointed in different ways in different communities with different church orders. Is there any evidence of a rite associated with this? Rather than discuss the question simply as a New Testament issue, it is best to look at it with an eye to subsequent developments.

The New Testament mentions the laying on of hands on four main occasions that could be important for consideration of the sacrament of orders (Acts 6:6; 13:3; 1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6; cf. 1 Tim. 5:22). Scholars do not agree on the background of this Christian action, whether it was borrowed from a supposed Jewish rite of ordination or was derived from more general Old Testament influences or was primarily a Christian introduction. Nor is there agreement that in these instances the function and the meaning of the gesture are the same.

In Acts 6:6 the seven are chosen in Jerusalem by the whole body of disciples for appointment by the apostles, who pray and lay their hands on them. In Acts 13:1–3, Barnabas and Saul are set apart in the church at Antioch for a mission in obedience to a command of the Holy Spirit. After fasting and prayer they (the prophets and teachers? others?) lay hands on Barnabas and Saul and send them on their mission. They are understood to be sent out by the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:4). In neither of these cases do scholars agree about the function or the meaning of this imposition of hands. The second especially may have been no more than a blessing or the acknowledgment of a mandate (cf. Acts 14:26, which may interpret this rite in saying that they were commended to the grace of God for this work). One other text from Acts makes an interesting parallel. According to Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church with prayer and fasting. The mention of prayer and fasting and the absence of reference to the laying on of hands are worth noting, though it could well be that the latter is assumed.

Although there is also disagreement as to the meaning of the imposition of hands in the two instances from the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6), perhaps there is a firmer consensus that it is part of what may be called with greater confidence an ordination rite. The choice of Timothy may have been made by prophetic utterance (1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14; cf. Acts 13:2), and the core of the rite by which he was commissioned is presented as the laying on of hands done by the body of presbyters and by Paul (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6). Probably this was done in public (cf. 2 Tim. 2:2 “in the presence of many witnesses”). In or through this rite a spiritual gift, a gift of God has been conferred. This gift is at the service of the Word, strengthening Timothy to bear public witness to the gospel (2 Tim. 1:8–14). He is warned “do not neglect” (1 Tim. 4:14); he is to “rekindle” this gift of God that he has received, and in fact, the last two chapters of 1 Timothy envisage a broad range of responsibility for the apostolate and the community. It is a power that enables him to carry out his ministry, a charisma for the office that he has received. Here we have the makings of a later, explicitly “sacramental,” understanding of such a rite.

No doubt these texts, partial as they are, represent different situations of time and place. They may not simply be collated in the expectation that the ensemble will provide the ordination rite of the early church or of Paul. Scholars maintain that the pattern of ministry, its understanding, and its mode of appointment or recognition, may be more varied than has been acknowledged in the past. In addition, as has been pointed out, the precise influences that led to the Christian use of the laying on of hands are unclear, and so the meaning of this action, and in some cases, its role, are also unclear. It is not evident that some such form was always and everywhere used during the New Testament period or indeed for some time after it, nor is there any probability that all these elements were present on all occasions. But neither can it be proved from the evidence of the New Testament that such a form was exceptional. Elements do undoubtedly emerge from the church of the New Testament that will influence all later generations and that will in fact endure.

Subject to all the qualifications that have been made, the following may serve as a summary of some of the points from the New Testament that will be prominent also in the subsequent tradition. In the appointment of ministers to positions of leadership, the whole local body of the church, and yet also particular ministers or groups of ministers, have an important role. The context of worship, of prayer and fasting, is mentioned, suggesting a liturgical setting and referring the ministry and appointment to it by God. Hands are laid on the candidate by a group within the church and/or by such individuals as Paul and Timothy. What the church does through its corporate action or through its leaders is regarded as inspired by the Holy Spirit, and through the church’s choice and the liturgical action, God provides for the church and gives a spiritual gift that in some way endures. This interworking of God-church-special ministers is to be noted, as is the religious form of the prayer-fasting-liturgical rite that is part of it.

Post-New Testament Developments

During the second century, episcopacy, presbyterate, and diaconate emerge almost everywhere as the most important ministries and form what will be the universal pattern. From the letter of Clement onward, correspondences are noted between the Jewish structure of authority and the Christian. Ignatius of Antioch already presents the bishop as an image of the Father, and here and elsewhere bishop, presbyter, and deacon are related in a variety of ways to God and to Jesus Christ. These comparisons manifest the conviction that the existence and the pattern of this ministry in the church are willed by God and mediate the authority and the power of God. Between God and the church is Jesus Christ, who came from God and from whom the power and the authority of the church originated historically. In the second and third centuries, a consensus may not yet have emerged as to the way the church commissions these ministers. Tertullian is the first that we know to use the Latin words ordo-ordinare-ordinatio as part of the Christian terminology.