Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot as one of the twelve apostles following Judas’s betrayal and death, in a process marked by prayerful discernment and scriptural fulfilment. After Peter addressed the gathered believers—about 120 in number—he cited the Psalms: “May another take his place of leadership” (
Acts 1:20), affirming the need to restore the apostolic number. Two men were nominated, Joseph called Barsabbas and Matthias, both of whom had accompanied Jesus throughout His ministry. The apostles then prayed, saying, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen” (
Acts 1:24), and cast lots to determine the outcome. The lot fell to Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles, signifying divine approval and the continuation of apostolic witness.
That’s correct, and we have the ordination of the Seven Deacons as well, who were ordained by the Twelve including St. Matthias the Apostle (not to be confused with St. Matthew, who was one of the eleven). The Seven Deacons included St. Stephen the Protomartyr, St. Philip the Deacon (not to be confused with St. Philip the Apostle), and on the other hand, Nicolas the heresiarch (not to be confused with the fourth century bishop, confessor, philanthropist and wonderworker St. Nicholas of Myra, who along with St. Basil the Great is one of the two figures upon which the secular “Santa Claus” is based.
I recall the first time I encountered an evangelical who asked me where ordination was found in the Bible and I was baffled - I told him to look in Acts for clear examples; I regret not having mentioned 1 Timothy as well, since 1 Timothy addresses requirements for ordination, although 1 Timothy is commonly misread as requiring episkopoi to be married when in fact it merely requires them to not be polygamists or remarried widowers.
Nicolas was the founder of the Nicolaitan sect, who fell under the influence of Simon Magus and that group, but Nicolaitanism was so much worse, but as much as Nicolas was a failure as a clergyman (and his downfall, like that of Judas, happened after his ordination - good people can turn to evil; my main criticism of some forms of Fundamentalist Calvinism is the idea that either evil people will always be evil and cannot repent and conversely the idea that repentence doesn’t matter because everyone is evil, and since we are of the elect, we can sin (I used to think this is what Martin Luther had meant by “sin boldly” but later
@MarkRohfrietsch explained to me how this was not a license to sin - indeed Luther and Calvin did believe that the faithful through grace could repent, and I think
@hedrick for telling me this about Calvinism, since even as a Congregationalist I had never been a true Calvinist; my view at the time, which I later realized was not incompatible with Patristic synergism, is that since God knows who will ultimately win the race and who will lose, that in that respect the universe is deterministic and one can speak of an Elect, but from our perspective, we at least have the appearance of free will and our actions matter, whether we are monergists like my Lutheran friends or synergists like the Orthodox, since Christ has said “by their fruits ye shall know them” and explained the virtues that are the fruits of faith, and what St. James the Just wrote in his Epistle, that faith without works is dead, does not contradict sola fide as understood by Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and Wesley, who believed that a living faith would produce good works, whereas in the case of the monergists like Luther and Calvin, a reprobate, with a dead faith, would continue to sin rather than repenting.
But all agree that God desires not the death of a sinner but that he should turn from his wickedness and live, a point the Anglicans do a good job of making in the Book of Common Prayer (which is why my ltiurgical group completed in 2023, but has not yet released, a new BCP edition intended for use by continuing Anglicans, Western Rite Orthodox, and perhaps with modifications by the Anglican Ordinariates in the RCC and the Lutherans, since it is public domain, but basically it is an edition of the BCP based on the 1928 American book, but with the best parts of other editions included (I think the very best of the traditional BCP editions was the 1929 Scottish book, and the 1979 American book could have been the best except for the problems of the three year lectionary, which it tried to mitigate, and the subtle inroads of liberalism, but the 1979 book is in the public domain and also among the Episcopalians it is allowed to fix the other flaw of the 1979 book - the use of the inaccurate translations of the initial English release of the Novus Ordo Missae, which was replaced in 2010 by a new translation at the order of Pope Benedict XVI, which corrected the worst errors such as replacing the phrase “and also with you” with “and with your spirit” which is the phrase found in all ancient liturgical texts, and ICEL’s original translation rendering et cum spiritu tuo as “and also with you” instead of “and with your spirit” was one of those errors which I feel was sufficiently problematic that it contributed to the increase in aliturgical Christianity.
It is worth remembering that before the the 1969 revision of the Roman mass, and the subsequent duplication of the style of the English translation by the English speaking Protestant churches, and the implementation of other aspects of the Novus Ordo by most major Protestant churches regardless of language, that the majority of churches were either liturgical, or sufficiently formal and traditional in their worship so that they would be regarded in comparison with the Non-Denominational churches, Evangelical churches and Megachurches of the present with their praise and worship music, etc, as “liturgical.” Indeed the primary difference between a typical Baptist church and a typical Methodist church was the practice of credobaptism exclusively in the former, along with a slightly shorter service, about 45-50 minutes rather than 75-90 minutes, with fewer hymns and more preaching, but in both cases you would typically have hymns in the format of a chorale accompanied by the organ, except in the minority of Baptist churches which preferred an a capella approach, in some cases using exclusive psalmody, and in some cases using various interesting forms of hymnody of English language origin, such as “lining out” the Psalter or square note singing, which are reminscent of the ancient Znamenny Chant historically used by Russian and Ukrainian Christians.
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