A question about the priesthood

[abacabb3]

Doing research on the Assyrian and other Eastern Christians, I have come to find out that they tend to have a lot in common with the Oriental Orthodox theologically though historically they are iconoclasts. However, what strikes me is that every one of them have a professional priesthood and they treat the worship service as if it were a sacrifice.

Does anyone know about the Church Fathers than me and know about the development of this practice? It clearly was not around since the beginning (the Scripture makes no mention of it, neither to the Apostolic Fathers) but it appeared to be nearly universal centuries later from Spain to India, then China.

 

[JM]

There is a link between the pagan interaction with the Gospel and the populace need for efficacy in the work of the Lord's Supper and Baptism. In light of scripture Roman or (the inability of) the Eastern Orthodox denominational ideas cannot be maintained.

 

[abacabb3]

When did it start?

 

[JM]

Sacerdotalism? I would say 2nd century. We also see a move toward sacramentalism. Both seem to go hand in hand.

 

[abacabb3]

Sacerdotalism? I would say 2nd century. We also see a move toward sacramentalism. Both seem to go hand in hand.

Do you have any citations from the Church Fathers?

 

[JM]

Do you have any citations from the Church Fathers?

The ECF's are very foggy on a lot of issues ranging from eschatology to church government. Try this...

The unbiblical apostate organization of the Roman Catholic church

 

[abacabb3]

I'm watching those James White videos when I go home.

 

[abacabb3]

The ECF's are very foggy on a lot of issues ranging from eschatology to church government. Try this...

The unbiblical apostate organization of the Roman Catholic church

Not that I disagree with the premise, but I don't see sources for that and even as early as Ignatius we see church government taking the mold that the site claims only existed after 150 CE.

 

[JM]

Not that I disagree with the premise, but I don't see sources for that and even as early as Ignatius we see church government taking the mold that the site claims only existed after 150 CE.

Post the quotes so we can all discuss them. I think they are probably pulled form their context as Dr. White demonstrates in his videos but lets have a look.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

 

[abacabb3]

Post the quotes so we can all discuss them. I think they are probably pulled form their context as Dr. White demonstrates in his videos but lets have a look.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

I will try to get to this. I have quite a few writing commitments, so I made do a cursory search in a little bit. I'm going by memory from reading the entirety of Ignatius' writings.

In the EPistle to the Ephesians chapter 2:

As to my fellow-servant Burrhus, your deacon in regard to God and blessed in all things, I beg that he may continue longer, both for your honour and that of your bishop. And Crocus also, worthy both of God and you, whom I have received as the manifestation of your love, has in all things refreshed 1 Corinthians 16:18, etc. me, as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ shall also refresh 1 Corinthians 16:18, etc. him; together with Onesimus, and Burrhus, and Euplus, and Fronto, by means of whom, I have, as to love, beheld all of you. May I always have joy of you, if indeed I be worthy of it. It is therefore befitting that you should in every way glorify Jesus Christ, who has glorified you, that by a unanimous obedience you may be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment, and may all speak the same thing concerning the same thing, 1 Corinthians 1:10 and that, being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, you may in all respects be sanctified.

Buhhrus is a deacon
Crocus, Burrhus, Euplus, and Fronto are probably a mix of elders and decons.
Onesimus is "the Bishop."

So, when Ignatius speaks of "being subject to the bishop and elders," it shows that the elders (as in the Scripture) had a definitive role in CHurch government, but the Overseer seems to have been escalated.

Throughout the Epistle, the definitive article is put in front of the word Bishop, which reflects there being only one.

 

[JM]

Some interesting history before getting too into the Ignatian letters. Some maybe legit, others are not...one thing is for sure...we can't compare them with scripture. Scripture uses the Greek term for Elder and Bishop interchangeably so it doesn't really matter what latter tradition added to that...

"The epistles ascribed to Ignatius have given rise to more controversy than any other documents connected with the primitive Church. As is evident to every reader on the very first glance at these writings, they contain numerous statements which bear on points of ecclesiastical order that have long divided the Christian world; and a strong temptation has thus been felt to allow some amount of prepossession to enter into the discussion of their authenticity or spuriousness. At the same time, this question has furnished a noble field for the display of learning and acuteness, and has, in the various forms under which it has been debated, given rise to not a few works of the very highest ability and scholarship. We shall present such an outline of the controversy as may enable the reader to understand its position at the present day.

There are, in all, fifteen Epistles which bear the name of Ignatius. These are the following: One to the Virgin Mary, two to the Apostle John, one to Mary of Cassobelae, one to the Tarsians, one to the Antiochians, one to Hero, a deacon of Antioch, one to the Philippians; one to the Ephesians, one to the Magnesians, one to the Trallians, one to the Romans, one to the Philadelphians, one to the Smyrnaeans, and one to Polycarp. The first three exist only in Latin: all the rest are extant also in Greek.

It is now the universal opinion of critics, that the first eight of these professedly Ignatian letters are spurious. They bear in themselves indubitable proofs of being the production of a later age than that in which Ignatius lived. Neither Eusebius nor Jerome makes the least reference to them; and they are now by common consent set aside as forgeries, which were at various dates, and to serve special purposes, put forth under the name of the celebrated Bishop of Antioch.

But after the question has been thus simplified, it still remains sufficiently complex. Of the seven Epistles which are acknowledged by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., iii. 36), we possess two Greek recensions, a shorter and a longer. It is plain that one or other of these exhibits a corrupt text, and scholars have for the most part agreed to accept the shorter form as representing the genuine letters of Ignatius. This was the opinion generally acquiesced in, from the time when critical editions of these Epistles began to be issued, down to our own day. Criticism, indeed, fluctuated a good deal as to which Epistles should be accepted and which rejected. Archp. Usher (1644), Isaac Vossius (1646), J. B. Cotelerius (1672), Dr. T. Smith (I709), and others, edited the writings ascribed to Ignatius in forms differing very considerably as to the order in which they were arranged, and the degree of authority assigned them, until at length, from about the beginning of the eighteenth century, the seven Greek Epistles, of which a translation is here given, came to be generally accepted in their shorter form as the genuine writings of Ignatius.

Before this date, however, there had not been wanting some who refused to acknowledge the authenticity of these Epistles in either of the recensions in which they were then known to exist. By far the most learned and elaborate work maintaining this position was that of Daillé (or Dallaeus), published in 1666. This drew forth in reply the celebrated Vindiciae of Bishop Pearson, which appeared in 1672. It was generally supposed that this latter work had established on an immoveable foundation the genuineness of the shorter form of the Ignatian Epistles; and, as we have stated above, this was the conclusion almost universally accepted down to our own day. The only considerable exception to this concurrence was presented by Whiston, who laboured to maintain in his Primitive Christianity Revived (1711) the superior claims of the longer recension of the Epistles, apparently influenced in doing so by the support which he thought they furnished to the kind of Arianism which he had adopted.

But although the shorter form of the Ignatian letters had been generally accepted in preference to the longer, there was still a pretty prevalent opinion among scholars, that even it could not be regarded as absolutely free from interpolations, or as of undoubted authenticity. Thus said Lardner, in his Credibility of the Gospel History (1743): "have carefully compared the two editions, and am very well satisfied, upon that comparison, that the larger are an interpolation of the smaller, and not the smaller an epitome or abridgment of the larger.... But whether the smaller themselves are the genuine writings of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, is a question that has been much disputed, and has employed the pens of the ablest critics. And whatever positiveness some may have shown on either side, I must own I have found it a very difficult question."

This expression of uncertainty was repeated in substance by Jortin (1751), Mosheim (1755), Griesbach (1768), Rosenmüller (1795), Neander (1826), and many others; some going so far as to deny that we have any authentic remains of Ignatius at all, while others, though admitting the seven shorter letters as being probably his, yet strongly suspected that they were not free from interpolation. Upon the whole, however, the shorter recension was, until recently, accepted without much opposition, and chiefly in dependence on the work of Bishop Pearson above mentioned, as exhibiting the genuine form of the Epistles of Ignatius.
But a totally different aspect was given to the question by the discovery of a Syriac version of three of these Epistles among the mss. procured from the monastery of St. Mary Deipara, in the desert of Nitria, in Egypt. In the years 1838, 1839, and again in 1842, Archdeacon Tattam visited that monastery, and succeeded in obtaining for the English Government a vast number of ancient Syriac manuscripts. On these being deposited in the British Museum, the late Dr. Cureton, who then had charge of the Syriac department, discovered among them, first, the Epistle to Polycarp, and then again, the same Epistle, with those to the Ephesians and to the Romans, in two other volumes of manuscripts.

As the result of this discovery, Cureton published in 1845 a work, entitled, The Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius to Polycarp, the Ephesian, and the Romans, etc., in which he argued that these Epistles represented more accurately than any formerly published what Ignatius had actually written. This, of course, opened up the controversy afresh. While some accepted the views of Cureton. others very strenuously opposed them. Among the former was the late Chev. Bunsen; among the latter, an anonymous writer in the English Review, and Dr. Hefele, in his third edition of the Apostolic Fathers. In reply to those who had controverted his arguments, Cureton published his Vindiciae Ignatianae in 1846, and his Corpus Ignatianum in 1849. He begins his introduction to the last-named work with the following sentences: "Exactly three centuries and a half intervened between the time when three Epistles in Latin, attributed to St. Ignatius, first issued from the press, and the publication in 1845 of three letters in Syriac bearing the name of the same apostolic writer. Very few years passed before the former were almost universally regarded as false and spurious; and it seems not improbable that scarcely a longer period will elapse before the latter be almost as generally acknowledged and received as the only true and genuine letters of the venerable Bishop of Antioch that have either come down to our times, or were ever known in the earliest ages of the Christian Church."

Had the somewhat sanguine hope thus expressed been realized, it would have been unnecessary for us to present to the English reader more than a translation of these three Syriac Epistles. But the Ignatian controversy is not yet settled. There are still those who hold that the balance of argument is in favour of the shorter Greek, as against these Syriac Epistles. They regard the latter as an epitome of the former, and think the harshness which, according to them, exists in the sequence of thoughts and sentences, clearly shows that this is the case. We have therefore given all the forms of the Ignatian letters which have the least claim on our attention. The reader may judge, by comparison for himself, which of these is to be accepted as genuine, supposing him disposed to admit the claims of any one of them. We content ourselves with laying the materials for judgment before him, and with referring to the above-named works in which we find the whole subject discussed. As to the personal history of Ignatius, almost nothing is known. The principal source of information regarding him is found in the account of his martyrdom, to which the reader is referred. Polycarp alludes to him in his Epistle to the Philippians (chap. ix.), and also to his letters (chap. xiii.). Irenaeus quotes a passage from his Epistle to the Romans (Adv. Haer., v.28; Epist. ad Rom., chap. iv.), without, however, naming him. Origen twice refers to him, first in the preface to his Comm. on the Song of Solomon, where he quotes a passage from the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans, and again in his sixth homily on St. Luke, where he quotes from the Epistle to the Ephesians, both times naming the author. It is unnecessary to give later references.
Supposing the letters of Ignatius and the account of his martyrdom to be authentic, we learn from them that he voluntarily presented himself before Trajan at Antioch, the seat of his bishopric, when that prince was on his first expedition against the Parthians and Armenians (a.d. 107); and on professing himself a Christian, was condemned to the wild beasts. After a long and dangerous voyage he came to Smyrna, of which Polycarp was bishop, and thence wrote his four Epistles to the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, and the Romans. From Smyrna he came to Troas, and tarrying there a few days, he wrote to the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, and Polycarp. He then came on to Neapolis, and passed through the whole of Macedonia. Finding a ship at Dyrrachium in Epirus about to sail into Italy, he embarked, and crossing the Adriatic, was brought to Rome, where he perished on the 20th of December 107, or, as some think, who deny a twofold expedition of Trajan against the Parthians, on the same day of the year a.d. 116.

Philip Schaff: Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, Introductory Note to the Syriac Version of the Ignatian Epistles:

Some account of the discovery of the Syriac version of the Ignatian Epistles has been already given. We have simply to add here a brief description of the mss. from which the Syriac text has been printed. That which is named a by Cureton, contains only the Epistle to Polycarp, and exhibits the text of that Epistle which, after him, we have followed. He fixes its age somewhere in the first half of the sixth century, or before the year 550. The second ms., which Cureton refers to as b, is assigned by him to the seventh or eighth century. It contains the three Epistles of Ignatius, and furnishes the text here followed in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Romans. The third ms., which Cureton quotes as g, has no date, but, as he tells us, "belonged to the collection acquired by Moses of Nisibis in a.d. 931, and was written apparently about three or four centuries earlier." It contains the three Epistles to Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans. The text of all these mss. is in several passages manifestly corrupt, and the translators appear at times to have mistaken the meaning of the Greek original."

The Ignatian Forgeries: They claim to be written by Ignatius in 110 AD, but were forged by another in about 250 AD that deceptively claimed to be Ignatius.

 

[abacabb3]

The issue is historically, we can't take every quote we don't like from Ignatius and say it was forged, because that is the same thing liberals do with the Scripture. Manuscript evidence is admissable and I do agree that we can focus on half the supposed Ignatian Epistles for the reasoning you provided,

But although the shorter form of the Ignatian letters had been generally accepted in preference to the longer, there was still a pretty prevalent opinion among scholars, that even it could not be regarded as absolutely free from interpolations, or as of undoubted authenticity. Thus said Lardner, in his Credibility of the Gospel History (1743): "have carefully compared the two editions, and am very well satisfied, upon that comparison, that the larger are an interpolation of the smaller, and not the smaller an epitome or abridgment of the larger.... But whether the smaller themselves are the genuine writings of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, is a question that has been much disputed, and has employed the pens of the ablest critics.

I must disagree with some of this. Though we may prefer some manuscripts over others, we cannot just claim that all of them or fake due to "suspicions." We need better evidence than that or almost the entire historical record is in doubt.

The legitimate epistles contain too many specific details and names, and don't make the outrageous claims typical of the spurious letters. They have common themes about submitting to bishops and what appears to be docetism (which we know to be an early heresy), so it raises an eye brow but it does not prove that they were forged. If Ignatius was wishing to impose, as it appears to be, unbiblical Church government it stands to reason that he would run into opposition.

However, to the best of my knowledge, it does appear that Bishop-led churches with the elders being an inferior branch arose as early as the second century. I have no historical letters that show that elder-led lasted past the first century. In Clement's letter to Corinth, it appeared to be elder led. So, something changed in the 30 years that elapsed between the two letters.

Being that Titus appointed elders, as did Timothy (and Paul), this does not mean that there being an authority above local bodies of elders is entirely unbiblical. However, it appears people started calling these people Bishops and made the church government more centralized.

I am not 100% sold on the elder-led model, as the way it is practiced today would actually contradict how Titus organized the churches in Crete.

P.S. The church I worship in is elder-led reformed baptist.

 

[JM]

A rep message from my RC buddy, "You fear clarity. Jesus will wait for you, don't worry! He wants you in his Church."

 

[High Fidelity]

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[JM]

A buddy of mine has gone through a few years of turmoil deciphering the polemics of Roman apologists. He likes the idea of the church having a continued line back to antiquity, the claim of unity and final authority on all matters of faith. He struggles because the Bible does not support these ideas.

Did you watch the videos before they were removed? I'm not sure whey they were removed, weird. Dr. White demonstrates the eisegesis of Rome and how they misquote, quote highly doubtful documents or doubtful translations of early documents.

 

[abacabb3]

A buddy of mine has gone through a few years of turmoil deciphering the polemics of Roman apologists. He likes the idea of the church having a continued line back to antiquity, the claim of unity and final authority on all matters of faith. He struggles because the Bible does not support these ideas.

Did you watch the videos before they were removed? I'm not sure whey they were removed, weird. Dr. White demonstrates the eisegesis of Rome and how they misquote, quote highly doubtful documents or doubtful translations of early documents.

Yes, all of them, very well argued too. James WHite is a real blessing. I am unsure how James WHite would approach this issue of church governance and the priesthood specifically.

I guess what I am still looking for is the history of the common priesthood that binds RCC, EO, OO, Assyrian Christianity, etc. They all share this same idea, so it must have started early, but I cannot find it in the church fathers for the first two or three centuries.

On a side note about the history of church government, as I already detailed in this thread quoting Ignatius, I am not sure that the independent elder-led church still existed in Ignatius time. If anything, it appeared that even that early Bishops were being imposed upon congregations they did not choose (such as Onesimus.) However, even in Clement's time there appears to be a plurality of overseerers/bishops. To make matters even more confusing, in Titus 1:5 it is obvious that Paul appointed Titus to appoint elders. So, when Titus passed away, did anyone take his "job" as an oversser for overseers? This may be the case in Ignatius time...

 

[JM]

All used interchangeably:

(1) Presbyter, or Elder - Acts 14:23; 20:17; 1 Tim. 5:17; Titus 1:5; 1 Pet. 5:1. It is translated from the Greek word presbuteros.

(2) Bishop, or Overseer - Acts 20:28; Titus 1:7; 1 Tim. 3:1; Phil. 1:1; 1 Pet. 5:2. From the Greek word episkopos.

(3) Pastor, Shepherd, Tend, or Feed - Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:2; Eph. 4:11. From the Greek word poimen.

Source

 

[abacabb3]

Cool. WHat was Titus in relation to the elders in each town?