Its date. Its language about the ministry case of which the internal evidence of date is in conflict with the external. For, on the one hand, all that Hermas says about the Christian ministry suggests such an early date as accords naturally with a mention of Clement-presumably the well-known Clement as the person in the Roman Church whose duty it was to send to other cities the visions vouchsafed to Hermas. On the other hand, we have positive information from a writer of the next generation that Hermas wrote the Shepherd at a period which can hardly be earlier than A.D. 140.1 What then are the hints given us by Hermas as to the condition of the ministry? (1) He speaks of 'the presbyters who preside over the Church,' and these must no doubt be identified with the occupants of the 'chief seat' whom he 1 Namely, the author of the Muratorian fragment, who asserts: 'Pastorem vero nuperrime temporibus nostris in urbe Roma Herma conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis Romae ecclesiae Pio episcopo fratre eius.' This is too definite a statement for us to reject, even if with Lightfoot, Clement ii. pp. 405-413, we ascribe the fragment to Hippolytus and to the later decades of the second century. But, accepting it, what are we to make of the reference in the Shepherd to a Clement whose duty it is to send Hermas' visions to foreign churches (Vis. ii. 4. 3. quoted in the next note)? Pius became bishop of Rome not after, but not very much before, A.D. 140. How then can Hermas refer to Clement as his contemporary? (1) We may, with Salmon Introd. p. 571 f., reject the whole statement of the Muratorian fragment: but this is, as was said just above, too arbitrary a course to adopt. (2) We may suppose that the Clement referred to is another Clement, and his office not the bishopric: but the phrase about sending to other cities seems quite obviously to allude to the historical Clement's authorship of the epistle to the church of Corinth. (3) We may conjecture that Hermas only published under Pius' episcopate visions that he had seen long ago when Clement was bishop: but there would remain the chronological difficulty that at the date of his visions he was already a married man with a grown-up family (Vis. i. 3, ii. 3), and if some forty years elapsed between the death of Clement and the accession of Pius, he would have been almost too old to publish. Still this seems a possible view. (4) The last alternative, and perhaps the least improbable, is to understand the reference to Clement as symbolic. Origen treats all three names here, Grapte, Clement, Hermas, as allegorical: see de Princip. iv. 11 (Philocalia i, 11). But none of these solutions is entirely satisfactory, and the uncertainty as to date renders the use of the book difficult. On the whole, however, Salinon's view seems to find fewer followers of late years: Lightfoot between his Philippians pp. 168, 169, and his Clement i. p. 4, Apostolic Fathers p. 294, seems to have gradually acquired somewhat more confidence in the statement of the Muratorian fragment. • Vis. ii. 4. 3. : γράψεις οὖν δύο βιβλαρίδια, καὶ πέμψεις ἓν Κλήμεντι καὶ ἐν Γραπτῇ· πέμψει οὖν Κλήμης εἰς τὰς ἔξω πόλεις, ἐκείνῳ γὰρ ἐπιτέτραπται· Γραπτὴ δὲ νουθετήσει τὰς χήρας καὶ τοὺς ὀρφανούς· σὺ δὲ ἀναγνώσῃ εἰς ταύτην τὴν πόλιν μετὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τῶν προϊσταμένων τῆς ἐκκλησίας. (There is nothing to indicate Clement's relation to the presbyters.) mentions elsewhere.1 The 'chief seat' is also spoken of as an object of ambition to false prophets and others.2 We also hear of deacons who abused their diaconate to make money, plundering widows and orphans. So far then the government of the church of Rome appears to be a government of presbyters, assisted by deacons in the administration of alms. (2) We have also mention twice over of church 'rulers,' and on one of the two occasions they are unmistakably distinguished, as in Clement's letter, from the occupants of the chief seat.' So far the phenomena are exactly the same as those presented by Clement's letter. (3) Thirdly, we have mention of 'apostles and teachers who preached over the whole world and who taught with gravity and purity the word of the Lord.' Both classes are spoken of as having 'received the Holy Ghost,' and both belong to the past generation. Here again there is no difficulty. 5 ambiguities (4) There is mention also of 'bishops' who exer- in spite of cised hospitality and protected the needy and the widows, and in another place a list is given of the worthies of the church ministry, past and present, as follows: Apostles and bishops and teachers and deacons, who walked according to the gravity of 1 Vis. iii. 9. 7, quoted in n. on this page. * Mand. xi. 12: ὁ δοκῶν πνεῦμα ἔχειν ὑψοῦ ἑαυτὸν καὶ θέλει πρωτοκαθεδρίαν ἔχειν. Cf. Sim. viii. 7. 4: Šýλóv tiva nepi прwτeiwv. In the Shepherd the prophet has no official dignity in the Church, see App. Note I, pp. 355, 356. * Sim. ix. 26. 2. Ib. 15. 4 we read of проóητaι тoû beoû kai diákovoi avrov: here the reference is to the prophets of the Old Testament, so that the word diákovo must be used in a general sense, meaning 'ministers.' 4 Vis. ii. 2. 6 : ἐρεῖς οὖν τοῖς προηγουμένοις τῆς ἐκκλησίας and iii. 9. 7 : ὑμῖν λέγω τοῖς προηγουμένοις τῆς ἐκκλησίας καὶ τοῖς πρωτοκαθεδρίταις. Sim. ix. 25. 2. The apostles are not identical with the teachers (Sim. ix. 16. 5 οἱ ἀπόστολοι καὶ οἱ διδάσκαλοι) and are once mentioned by themselves (Sim. ix. 17.1: they were the preachers to 'the twelve tribes who inhabit the whole world,' and are therefore presumably reckoned as twelve). But both apostles and teachers belong to the past generation and were the original proclaimers of the gospel (Sim. ix. 15. 4). Together they are symbolized under forty stones in the fabric of the tower which is the Church. * Sim. ix. 27. 2 : ἐπίσκοποι [καὶ] φιλόξενοι, οἵτινες ἡδέως εἰς τοὺς οἴκους ἑαυτῶν πάντοτε ὑπεδέξαντο τοὺς δούλους τοῦ θεοῦ ἄτερ ὑποκρίσεως· οἱ δὲ ἐπίσκοποι κ.τ.λ. suggests an order God and exercised their episcopate and taught and In any case it seems clear that this document adds superior to considerably to the force of the argument derived presbyters. from Clement's language, that even when the presbyters were the chief local authorities they were still in subordination to 'rulers,' who represented, since the apostles and teachers had passed away, the chief authority in the Church. Summary for the West. In summing up the results derived from a consideration of the historical links which in the Western Church connect the age of the Apostles with that of 1 Vis. iii. 5. I. 1 Irenaeus, there are two theories which require notice besides the one which we have been led to adopt. theories: colleges of bishops; There is the view (which is undoubtedly supported Possible by the Epistle of Polycarp, taken alone) that the equal churches in the West were governed simply by a presbyter council of presbyters, who had no superiors over them, and who must therefore be supposed to have handed on their own ministry. There is no objection on ground of principle to this conclusion viewed in the light of the apostolic succession, as has been sufficiently explained already. Such presbyterbishops would have legitimately ordained' and fulfilled episcopal functions because those functions would have belonged to the equal commission which they had all received. But later under the teachings of experience this full commission was confined to one 'bishop,' and the rest received the reduced authority which belongs to the presbyterate of later church history. Such a process would not represent the elevation of any new dignity from below but the limitation of an old dignity to one instead of its extension to many, and that in accordance with the precedent set by the Apostle St. John. 'Monepiscopacy' takes the place of a diffused episcopacy.1 It has however been pointed out that this supposition does not satisfy all the evidence of Clement's letter or of the Shepherd. It should also be added that it makes the strong tradition of the monepiscopal succession which meets us in the latter part of the second century, and the undisputed supremacy of the single bishop, almost unintelligible. bishop Secondly, there is a view based on the considera- (ii) the tion that long after the existence of bishops in every hidden in church, as distinct from presbyters, the term presbyter terate; could still be used for both orders, as it is occasionally 1 So Dr. Langen states the principle Gesch. der röm. Kirche i. p. 95, and Lightfoot (Ignat. i. p. 376 n.') expresses agreement with him. the presby. (iii) the gradual by Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Consequently it is maintainable that in the Church of Clement's day and of Polycarp's there existed, at Corinth and at Philippi, one amongst the presbyters, who, though he held the unique powers which afterwards belonged to the episcopate, was still included under the common name.1 While, however, this view cannot be disproved, it must be admitted that it is unsupported by the evidence of the documents we have been considering. The conclusion which on the whole we have been localization led to form is that the supreme power did not, in the men-the West any more than in the East, ever devolve upon ported view. the presbyters. There was a time when they were of apostolic best sup. in many places (as for instance at Corinth and 1 Dr. Salmon writes (Introd. p. 576): 'It has been thought that although Clement's letter exhibits the prominence of a single person as chief in the Church of Rome, it affords evidence that there was no such prominence in the Church of Corinth. . . . But this inference is not warranted.' |