Ordination is rooted in the need for order within the Christian community. It tends both to reflect and to shape the church’s life and witness amid changing historical circumstances. An important development in the post–New Testament period was the emergence of a three-office structure for ordained ministry (bishop, presbyter, deacon) and the subsequent transformation of that structure into a more authoritarian one as the church came to assume a public role in a wider cultural context.
Emergence of a Threefold Office Structure in the Early Church
The earliest Christian communities had no common, universal structure for leadership. Though most, if not all, had been formed in response to the preaching of itinerant apostles and prophets, the cultural contexts in which those churches were planted helped produce a variety of patterns for local leadership, some informed by Jewish models, others by models derived from Greco-Roman society. Immersed as these early churches were in the apocalyptic worldview of early apostolic preaching, such communities assumed that Jesus’ return was imminent. As a result, there was little, if any, the urgency to develop norms for office and ordination that would assure continuity in the church’s organizational leadership.
Concern for developing reproducible leadership models—less particular, more universal models—could not emerge until the church as seen in the later Gospels and Epistles began to realize the need for securing a historical future. By the end of the New Testament era, a number of factors including the death of the original apostolic witnesses, the demise of the church in Jerusalem, and the delay of the Parousia, forced the church to adopt forms of church order in which the authenticity of apostolic teaching could be maintained.
Emergence of a Threefold Office Structure
Earlier patterns of ministry had relied upon both the teaching authority of itinerant apostles, charismatic prophets, and evangelists and the organizational and the leading authority of diverse forms of collegial local church leaders. The pattern that emerged toward the end of the first century, however, consolidated the functions exercised by both local and itinerant leaders and vested them in three congregational offices of leadership: (1) single pastor-bishops, elected by each community, who presided over all aspects of the congregation’s life and worship; (2) groups of collegial community-elected leaders known as presbyters, who oversaw the life of the community under the leadership of the bishop; and (3) service-oriented ministers called deacons, who assisted the bishop in both ministry and worship. Though some forms of itinerant charismatic ministry (e.g., the prophets) continued to function alongside this new order for ministry for a while, their authority increasingly was subordinated to that of the local leaders, particularly the pastor-bishop.
This form of church order is known as “mon-episcopacy.” Its defining characteristic is the emergence of a single bishop, elected by each congregation, who is charged with presiding over the community’s life and worship in a shared and mutually cooperative way with others. The classic apology for this model is found in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch early in the second century. The bishop, says Ignatius, represents God the Father within the community, presiding over the council of elders (presbyters) and assisted by deacons. The bishop—as a representative leader—functions as a “type” for God within the community, just as the deacons become a “type” for Christ and presbyters become a “type” for the apostles. The bishop is not merely “first among equals” for Ignatius, but the one whose office preserves the unity of the church’s life and worship (cf. Epistle to the Magnesians). Though the roots of all three offices may be traced back to the New Testament, the particular configuration of the three offices and their interpretation by the early church fathers are both innovations arising from the church’s second-century concern for preserving its unity and perpetuating its historic mission.
The sources for tracing just how these leaders were chosen and ordained for these tasks are practically nonexistent until the beginning of the third century. We know from the writings of Irenaeus and Hegesippus that “succession” (didadochē) had become an important norm governing the election and ordination of bishops in order to counter Gnostic claims of revelation. The issue, however, was not framed in terms of a linear succession of persons, but in terms of fidelity to and continuity with apostolic teaching. In order to assure that fidelity and continuity (and as a sign of communion between churches), all new bishops were ordained by the bishops of neighboring congregations. During the sometimes bitter struggle to preserve orthodox teaching in the face of numerous heterodox challenges during the fourth and fifth centuries, this provision became a significant means of providing accountability in teaching.
Though some questions remain regarding its normative status for churches in other parts of the empire, the third-century church order known as the Apostolic Tradition (c. 215) provides the first substantive evidence of the rites by which persons were admitted to office in the Western church. Because Hippolytus, the author to whom the Apostolic Tradition is attributed, is believed to have been an arch-conservative, anxious to challenge the legitimacy of new thinking and practices within the church, this document is thought to reflect church practice at Rome as far back as the mid-second century.
In any case, Hippolytus provides descriptions and prayers for the ordination of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, as well as descriptions and rites for the appointment of persons to other, non-ordained offices as well. The following elements formed the matrix within which ordination took place:
First, fidelity to apostolic teaching is explicitly noted as a characteristic needed in those ordained as bishops: “ … in order that those who have been well taught by our exposition may guard that tradition” (Apostolic Tradition 1).
Second, ordination takes place on the Lord’s Day in the midst of the assembly, which must give its explicit approval to the choice of the candidate. Bishops are ordained by the laying on of hands of neighboring bishops, together with a prayer that seeks the graces needed to carry out their ministry (Apostolic Tradition 2). Presbyters are ordained by the laying on of hands of both the bishop and the congregational presbytery, together with a prayer that seeks the “Spirit of grace and counsel of the presbyterate” (Apostolic Tradition 7). Deacons are ordained by the laying on of hands by the congregation’s bishop, together with a prayer that seeks the spirit of “grace and caring and diligence” (Apostolic Tradition 8). In all cases, the prayer of the presiding minister is preceded by a period of silent prayer by the whole community for the descent of the Holy Spirit, thus underscoring that ordination is an action of the whole community and not merely of its representative leaders.
Third, those ordained as bishops receive the kiss of peace as a sign that they have been made worthy, and then immediately preside at a celebration of the Eucharist, using a prayer which thanks God for holding “us worthy to stand before you and minister to you” (Apostolic Tradition 4). This prayer is now officially approved for use at the Eucharist in nearly all mainline Protestant churches as well as the Roman Catholic church.
Later patristic era church orders in both the East and the West preserve these basic elements of the rite. Some of them also add other elements such as the bestowal of symbols of office and a formal declaration of ordination.
Transformation in Understanding of the Threefold Office Structure
Though the substance of the ordination rites for bishops, presbyters, and deacons remained fairly constant throughout the patristic era, the church’s understanding of both the offices themselves and the meaning of ordination began to change as the church began to assume a more public role in society. Three such changes were to prove particularly important.
The first such change was a gradual reappropriation of Old Testament priestly typology for interpreting the functions of ordained ministers. The earliest strata of Christian teaching had eschewed the language of the priesthood in describing church leaders, insisting that priesthood belonged only to Jesus Christ (Heb. 4:14ff). Other New Testament witnesses extended that language by analogy to the whole body of Christ, the church (1 Pet. 2:9). Beginning toward the end of the first century (Clement and the Didachē) and with increasing frequency during the second century (Justin Martyr, Polycarp, and Tertullian), the language of priesthood began to be used to describe the office of bishop (and later, the office of the presbyter). This usage was increasingly linked to the presidency at the Eucharist.
The second change arose as a by-product of the legitimation of Christianity, which occurred by fits and starts during the second and third centuries and obtained critical mass by imperial fiat during the fourth century. The structure of ordained ministry attested to in the Apostolic Tradition included a local bishop or pastor who taught and preached and presided at worship, a collegial council of advisors and overseers known as presbyters, and deacons who carried out the church’s ministries of benevolence. The increasing legitimation of the church, however, eventually led to rapid growth in church membership and strained the capacity of that model to meet the needs of a growing, and increasingly urban, church. Moreover, the church’s increasingly public status provided sanctions for appropriating and adapting the political models of the Roman Empire for its own use.
Little by little, the assumption that every congregation would have its own bishop-pastor to preside at the Eucharist and its own council of presbyters to share with the bishop in overseeing its common life gave way to a more prelatical model in which a single bishop would oversee multiple congregations within a particular region. In turn, the council of presbyters became less a collegial body of locally elected persons chosen to lead the congregation together with its local bishop-pastor, and more a group of episcopal assistants dispersed by him to preside at the Eucharist in the smaller or less important congregations under his care. The functions of deacons, who had been representative leaders not only in each congregation’s worship but in those congregations’ care of their own members and outreach to others, came to be understood primarily in terms of their liturgical roles.
The third change involved a gradual redefinition of the relationship between ordained office-bearers and the rest of the church. Though there is, particularly within the Catholic Epistles, some movement in the direction of “character tests” for those who would lead the community of faith, for most of the New Testament the most theologically and ritually significant boundary is not between leaders and members, but the boundary between those who are “in Christ” (the priesthood of all believers celebrated in baptism) and those who are not.
By the end of the patristic period, however, the focus on the eucharistic presidency as the radical principle undergirding the office of bishop or pastor, the appropriation of priestly typology and imagery for understanding ministry, and the appropriation of imperial models for organizing and overseeing the church’s life and mission-led, at least implicitly, to the drawing of a new line between clergy and laity. The sign and seal of this new boundary was celibacy, a discipline that arose first as an expectation for those ordained as bishops, but which became de rigeur for the other major offices as their responsibilities were redefined in increasingly liturgical terms. In its most developed form during the Middle Ages, the order of clergy included a series of minor offices to which persons were ordained to exercise functions that, during the early years (cf. Apostolic Tradition 9–14), had been exercised by non-ordained members of the congregation (e.g., exorcist, acolyte, porter, lector).
During the Middle Ages, these transformed understandings of ministry were wedded to juridical understandings of authority, ultimately laying a foundation for the crisis and critique of the Reformation.
