Rites of Ordination: Their History and Theology

Although the Greek word laos, “people,” was at first used to refer to all members of the church, even as early as 1 Clement, as we saw in the previous chapter, the notion began to emerge that God had arranged for there to be different orders (tagmata) in the church (41.1) and that “the laity,” laikoi (40.5), constituted a distinct one of these. A similar idea was picked up by Tertullian at the beginning of the third century, who drew on the Latin expressions used in Roman society to differentiate the ordo, the magistrates and officials, from the plebs, the general populace, in order to distinguish the ordained ministry from the rest. “It is the authority and honor of the church sanctified to God through the joint session of the Ordo that has established the difference between the Ordo and the Laity.”¹ His terminology was not immediately adopted, however. Cyprian and other third-century writers seem to avoid the use of ordo, although they do speak of ordinatio, “ordination.”² It is only in the fourth and fifth centuries that ordo and “holy orders” become more common to designate ordained ministers, although some writers did regard laypeople, too, as constituting an order: Jerome speaks of five orders in the church—bishops, presbyters, deacons, faithful, and catechumens.³

The term “clergy” (clerus in Latin) is derived from klēros in Greek, which had originally meant a “lot,” both in the sense of the token used in a lottery and in the sense of an allotment of land, but was adopted by Christian writers from Clement of Alexandria onward (Quis dives salvetur 42) as a designation for ordained ministers. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. It may have been influenced by the fact that priestly duties were allocated by lot in the Old Testament (e.g., 1 Chr 24:5; 25:8), especially as the Apostolic Tradition uses the expression “to give lots” in its ordination prayer for a bishop apparently to mean “to assign ecclesiastical duties” (3.5; see also 30A.2). Equally, the word had been used in the New Testament to denote an allotted place or salvific inheritance received from God (e.g., Acts 26:18; Col 1:12), and also to denote those entrusted to one’s charge (1 Pet 5:3, “not lording it over those allotted,” tōn klērōn). In the second century, Ignatius describes martyrdom as his inheritance, klēros (Romans 1.1; Trallians 12.3), and the phrase “the klēros of the martyrs” in the sense of the company of martyrs occurs twice in the accounts of the martyrdoms at Lyons (Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 5.1.10, 26). This understanding of the word as a place assigned to one by God seems to have led Irenaeus to use it to denote an allotted place in the episcopal succession from the apostles (Adversus haereses 1.27.1; 3.3.3), and may well have contributed to its usage for those allocated by God to ordained ministries.

Later on, Augustine connected its adoption to the election of Matthias by lot in Acts 1:26 (Enarrationes in Psalmos 67.16), while Jerome (Epistula 52.5) related it to the Levites who possessed no land because the Lord was their lot (Num 18:20), an interpretation derived from Philo (De specialibus legibus 1.131, 156). This explanation became enormously popular in later centuries, and was used to justify the special status, privileges, and rights of the clergy. At first, however, it was not clear which of the ordained ministers were to be accounted as “clergy.” Sometimes the term was used inclusively of all ordained ministers, at other times to denote ordained ministers other than the bishop. The Apostolic Tradition even excludes deacons from “the counsel of the clergy” because they lack the “common spirit of the presbyterate” (8.3–4). Later writers, however, tend to speak of “bishops and clergy.”

Prior to the beginning of the third century no Christian text uses the title “priest” (hiereus in Greek, sacerdos in Latin) directly to designate a particular individual or group of ministers within the church. Instead, sacerdotal terminology is applied both to Christ—usually as “high priest,” following with the language of the Letter to the Hebrews (e.g., Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 116.1; Irenaeus, Advesus haereses 4.8.2)—and to Christians in general, following 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10; 20:6.⁴ Christians constituted “the true high-priestly race of God” (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 116.3; see also Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.8.3; 5.34.3), whose principal sacrifice was the oblation of their lives but also included the offering of worship, both eucharistic and noneucharistic (e.g., Didache 14.1; Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 117.1ff.; Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.17.5–6).

This imagery was continued in the centuries that followed. Tertullian was insistent that laypeople were priests (De oratione 28), and in his Montanist period even thought that they might offer the Eucharist as well as baptize in the absence of an ordained minister (De exhortatione castitatis 7.3). Similarly, the baptismal anointing of a Christian was interpreted by some in a priestly sense (Didascalia 3.12; Tertullian, De baptismo 7), and the eucharistic prayer in the Apostolic Tradition speaks of Christians as having been made worthy to stand before God and minister/serve as priests.⁵ Moreover, both widowhood (Tertullian, Ad uxorem 1.7) and martyrdom (Cyprian, Epistula 76.3) could also be described as special forms of priestly consecration.

Alongside this, however, began to develop a different usage, the seeds of which can already be seen at the end of the first century: Didache 13.3 compares Christian prophets to high priests when speaking of the offering of first fruits; and as we have seen, 1 Clement cites the example of the assignment of different cultic roles to different ministers in the Old Testament Law as an argument against Christians transgressing the appointed limits of their respective ranks (40–41), and also uses the cultic expression “offered the gifts” in relation to bishops rather than the Christian community as a whole (44.4). These passages, however, are unique within Christian literature of the first two centuries, and in any case do not go as far as explicitly saying that Christian ministers are priests. It is not until the third century that sacerdotal terminology starts to be used regularly and in a more literal manner to refer to the ordained.

Tertullian uses sacerdotal language in this way somewhat hesitantly. He applies the term chief or high priest (summus sacerdos) to the bishop only once in his writings, and then in a context that suggests it may perhaps have been a metaphor occasioned by the particular argument rather than a regular term for the office: “Of giving [baptism], the chief-priest (if he may be so called), the bishop, has the chief right, then presbyters and deacons, yet not without the authority of the bishop” (De baptismo 17.1). And he uses the word priest (sacerdos) with reference to the bishop only twice, both instances belonging to his Montanist period (De exhortatione castitatis 11.2; De pudicitia 21.17).⁶ Although on one occasion he does say that presbyters belong to the ordo sacerdotalis (De exhortatione castitatis 7), the other passages where he might seem to call them sacerdotes are all ambiguous (e.g., De pudicitia 20.7). Similarly, the Didascalia, while acknowledging that Christ is the true high priest, at the same time calls bishops “high priests,” and describes deacons, presbyters, widows, and orphans as the equivalent of Levites (2.26.1–4). However, this is a passage that concerns the offering of tithes, and thus the comparison seems to be intended more to justify their financial support than to ascribe cultic status to them, as also seems to be the case in Didache 13.3 mentioned above. The same appears to be true when the later Syrian church order, the Testamentum Domini, called widows, readers, and subdeacons “priests” (1.23).

Cyprian also uses the precedent of the Levites receiving tithes from the other tribes (Num 18) to justify clergy being financially supported by the laity and so refraining from work themselves (Epistula 1.1), and he regularly calls the bishop sacerdos, reserving summus sacerdos for Christ alone (e.g., Epistula 63.14). He understood presbyters to share in the priesthood exercised by the bishop (e.g., Epistula 61.3.1), but scholars have disputed whether or not he regarded them as priests in their own right, independent of the priesthood of the bishop (see, e.g., Epistulae 40.1.2; 67.4.3). Indeed, some have maintained that presbyters were not called priests unequivocally until the fifth century, although the evidence does not seem to support that position. In Alexandria, Origen consistently described bishops as priests (e.g., De oratione 28; Homiliae in Leviticum 6.3), and certainly saw presbyters as also exercising a priesthood, albeit of an inferior kind to that of the bishop (Homiliae in Exodum 11.6; Homiliae in Leviticum 6.6). This concept was probably inspired by 2 Kings 23:4, which mentions both the high priest and “priests of the second order,” and is one that recurs in later writings, including the classic Roman ordination prayer for presbyters, which equates them with the “men of a lesser order and secondary dignity” (sequentis ordinis viros et secundae dignitatis) chosen by God as assistants to the high priests in the Old Testament. Origen also explicitly compared the deacon to the Levite (Homiliae in Josue 2.1), and later Jerome spoke of bishops, presbyters, and deacons as being the equivalent of Aaron, his sons, and the Levites in the Old Testament (Epistulae 52.7; 146.2). Such typology subsequently became common, although a few ancient writers spoke instead of the diaconate as constituting a third order within the priesthood, the earliest extant instance of this view being Optatus of Milevis in the fourth century (Adversus Donatistas 1.13). This latter concept was taken up in later Eastern thought, but not in the West, which continued to use the image of the Levite to describe the diaconate and excluded deacons from the priesthood.

Regardless of whether presbyters were already designated as priests or not, we should abandon the romantic image that after the emergence of the monepiscopate, bishops were the only normal presidents at the Eucharist, with the presbyters forming a circle around them and only presiding on their own in exceptional circumstances. While such a picture may have been possible in places where the number of Christians was quite small and they could all gather in one place, it would have been totally impractical in a large city prior to the construction of huge basilicas in the late fourth century, and equally out of the question where the bishop’s diocese extended far into the country. In these situations, presbyters would have had to be the regular eucharistic presidents, even if the extant literature does not give that practice much prominence,⁷ and so it would only have been a matter of time before sacerdotal terminology began to be applied to them as well as to the bishop.

These two third-century developments—the sharp distinction drawn between clergy and laity and the idea of the ordained ministry as exercising a priesthood on behalf of the laity—gradually weakened the older view in which the ordained were understood as those who presided within a priestly people. We can see the beginnings of this in Tertullian, where the expression “offer [the Eucharist]” refers to the action of the president and not the whole community (e.g., De virginibus velandis 9.2), and it is developed in Cyprian, who speaks of the sacerdos (i.e., the bishop), not the whole people, acting “in the place of Christ” (in vice Christi) at the Eucharist: “For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is himself the high priest of God the Father and first offered himself as a sacrifice to the Father, and commanded this to be done in his remembrance, then that priest truly functions in the place of Christ who imitates what Christ did and then offers a true and full sacrifice in the church to God the Father, if he thus proceeds to offer according to what he sees Christ himself to have offered.”⁸ Although thereafter some liturgical texts themselves might still carry the more ancient image of the common priesthood in which all Christians participated, both theological discourse and ecclesiastical practice instead came to view ordination rather than baptism as the decisive point of entry into the priestly life.

This change of perspective is often interpreted as being largely the result of social pressures on the church, because in the ancient world a religion needed a priesthood. But this explanation does not seem sufficient to account for it. At the period when sacerdotal language first emerged, Christian apologists were still insisting that Christianity was not a religion like others in the ancient world. Moreover, Judaism, which survived the loss of the Temple by viewing synagogue worship as a surrogate for the cult, did not find it necessary to take this step at all. It is perhaps more likely, therefore, that what caused Christianity to begin to regard its ministers as priests was the increasing importance that came to be attached to authoritative leadership in the church’s struggle against heresy and schism. In this situation the sense of the unity of the whole Christian community became less significant than the part played by the ordained ministers within it, and so, in turn, the pattern of Old Testament sacrificial worship gradually came to be seen as fulfilled in a more literal fashion in the persons of those ministers rather than in a more spiritual way by the body as a whole.

It is vitally important to recognize, however, that while the source of the image of priesthood for Christianity may be the cultic practices of the Old Testament, the concept of the sacerdotal office in the early church went far beyond merely the offering of sacrifice. Praxis shaped theory, and not the other way around. Thus, priestly service was not simply focused on the Eucharist but also included the celebration of other sacramental rites, and even more significantly was understood to extend to both preaching and teaching. So, for example, John Chrysostom in his homily on the day of his presbyteral ordination proclaimed that he had been placed among the priests and that the word was his sacrifice.⁹

We have seen that widows were singled out as particular objects of charity within the early Christian communities, but there are signs that they and other women once exercised a more active ministerial role in some places. We know that even at the end of the second century female prophets still took a prominent liturgical part in some Christian groups that were more on fringe, especially the Montanist movement, but it is still a matter of dispute whether women ever presided at worship in more mainstream traditions.¹⁰ Yet the existence of prohibitions against them doing so would seem to suggest that at least there was fear that they might. So, for example, Tertullian denies women the right to teach or baptize, which some were apparently claiming on the basis of a spurious work attributed to the Apostle Paul in which the virgin Thecla did both those things;¹¹ and the Apostolic Church Order, a work usually regarded as having been written in the early fourth century but strongly argued by Alistair Stewart-Sykes as having been composed in the early third century out of even older source material, opposes any liturgical activities by women, especially presiding at the Eucharist.¹² Similarly, the Apostolic Tradition insists that widows should not be “ordained” but appointed “by the word only.” Its extended and emphatic denial of ordination to them suggests that their status within the community from which this arose was leading some to view them in that way: “Hands shall not be laid on her, because she does not offer up the offering or the liturgy. But ordination is for the clergy for the sake of the liturgies, and the widow is appointed only for the sake of the prayer, and this belongs to everyone.”¹³

In the Didascalia, widows were encouraged to engage in intercession (3.5.2) but were specifically forbidden to teach (3.6.1–2), and all women were prohibited from baptizing: “For if it were lawful to be baptized by a woman, our Lord and Teacher would himself have been baptized by Mary his mother” (3.9). This curtailment of the ministry of women and the demand for widows to be under firm episcopal control that runs through the work suggests that the activities of widows in particular had posed a challenge and threat to the authority of the bishop.¹⁴ On the other hand, the Didascalia introduces the office of female deacon in such an abrupt manner that it looks like a later interpolation into the text that had once allowed women in general to perform the prebaptismal anointing of female candidates because “it is not right that a woman should be seen by a man.”¹⁵ It does not use the term deaconess (in Greek, diakonissa), which did not come into currency until the fourth century, but the female form of the word for a deacon.

By the middle of the third century we encounter the existence of a number of other ministries exercised by men, those which would later be called “minor orders” to distinguish them from the offices of bishop, presbyters, and deacons. All our evidence for these comes from the West at this period. A letter written in 251 by Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, lists as existing in the city, in addition to the one bishop, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, and fifty-two exorcists, plus readers and doorkeepers.¹⁶ Cyprian in North Africa at the same time makes frequent mention of the same minor orders (except doorkeepers) in his correspondence and implies that the bishop made appointments to them on his own authority. We have no information from Cyprian as to what ritual, if any, accompanied their appointment, but the Apostolic Tradition, which knows of both readers and subdeacons but no other minor orders, directs that the bishop should appoint the former by presenting him with the book from which he was to read, but just name the latter (Apostolic Tradition 11, 13).

That there were just seven deacons at Rome (with seven subdeacons to assist them) is a clear indication that the diaconate was understood here to be derived from the Stephen and his companions in Acts 6. This was a view shared by Cyprian (Epistula 3.3) and held almost universally thereafter.¹⁷ We find the same pattern of seven deacons repeated in other churches at a later date, although not everywhere. Is it possible that the subdiaconate emerged to assist the deacons because while the limit was apostolically mandated, it was insufficient to cope with the large numbers of those in need of diaconal ministry?¹⁸ Cornelius’ letter states that the church in Rome was responsible for taking care of over fifteen hundred widows and other persons in distress.

We have already seen “a reader” mentioned by Justin Martyr, but that may only have meant “someone who reads” rather than a formally appointed official. Tertullian certainly implies that the office existed by the end of the second century, as he criticizes the Gnostics because among them individuals moved indiscriminately from one ministry to another: “today one is a deacon, who tomorrow will be a reader” (De praescriptione haereticorum 41). It is likely that this was the oldest of these minor orders—it is the only one mentioned in the Apostolic Church Order—and it would have been especially necessary where the bishop was illiterate, which was not unknown.¹⁹ The fourth-century Canons of Hippolytus states that a reader “is to have the virtues of the deacon.”²⁰ Acolytes are so named from the Greek akolouthos, a follower or attendant. Although we have evidence from later sources as to their having minor liturgical functions, there is no information from this earlier time as to what the purpose of their appointment might have been. Cyprian shows them as accompanying subdeacons as messengers (e.g., Epistulae 45, 77, 78, 79).

Tertullian furnishes us with only the vaguest of indications about the appointment of those he calls seniores who preside: they obtain their position not through money but through repute (Apologeticum 39.5; see also De praescriptione haereticorum 41.6–7). We learn a little bit more about ordination procedure at Rome in the early third century from the account given by Eusebius of the extraordinary election of Fabian as bishop there in 236:

Although divine intervention such as this was obviously not a normal part of the process, it is reasonable to assume that the other elements mentioned were. The whole community participated in the election, several candidates were considered, and eventually one was declared worthy and finally placed on the bishop’s seat. On the other hand, we should not assume that this account included the totality of what constituted an ordination. It is obviously in abbreviated form, mentioning only aspects relevant to the story, and so does not mention, for instance, prayer with the laying on of hands. Eusebius provides a little more detail about the ordination of presbyters at Rome in a letter written by Pope Cornelius about the appointment of Novatian as a presbyter there. Here it is said that his ordination had been opposed by all the clergy and many of the laity on the grounds that anyone who had received only clinical baptism was not allowed to enter the clergy, but the bishop, Fabian, had asked them to consent to him ordaining just this one.²² It appears, therefore, that though a bishop might nominate candidates for ordination, the consent of clergy and laity was also required here.

From the writings of Cyprian we glean a little more information about the process of ordination both in North Africa and at Rome in the middle of the century, even if we do not know much about what happened elsewhere. Although he saw each bishop as sovereign within his own diocese, he understood bishops collectively to form a “college,” and he was the first Christian writer unequivocally to designate them as the successors of the apostles (Epistulae 3.3; 66.4). He was also insistent that candidates were appointed to the episcopate by “the judgment of God”—that is, it was a divine act and not just a human one²³—which was made manifest through the “testimony of the clergy” and “the suffrage of the people,” and with the consent of other bishops of the province, who either were present or sent letters of approval (see Epistulae 43.1; 55.8; 59.5–6; 68.2). We also learn that candidates for the episcopate might be drawn from those who had served in other ministries, as he affirms that Cornelius was not made Bishop of Rome suddenly but was “promoted through all the ecclesiastical offices” (Epistula 55.8).²⁴

In a letter to the church in Spain, Cyprian describes the above practices as being of “divine tradition and apostolic observance” and as being maintained in “nearly all the provinces,” having previously cited as scriptural warrants that ordained ministers should be chosen in the presence of the people, Numbers 20:25-27, where Eleazar is appointed “before all the congregation,” Acts 1:15, where the replacement for Judas is chosen “in the midst of the disciples,” and Acts 6:2, where the apostles ordain “deacons” in the presence of all (Epistula 67.4–5). The need for absent bishops to send letters means that either a period of time had to elapse between the local community’s initial choice and its final confirmation or that the bishops just subsequently ratified an appointment that had already been made.²⁵ It also suggests that the purpose of the presence of other bishops was not as the transmitters of sacramental grace but as witnesses to the regularity of the proceedings and as expressions of their approval. Nonetheless, once they were there, it would have been inevitable that they would not have remained for long as passive spectators of a presbyterally conducted rite but would have arranged for one of their number to take over the central act of prayer and the imposition of hands, as we find in later rites.

We should note that Cyprian acknowledges that the involvement of other bishops was observed only in “nearly all the provinces” in his day, and there is some evidence to suggest that in Alexandria the older custom of presbyters presiding at the ordination of their new bishop persisted at least until the middle of the third century, if not later,²⁶ and the same may well also have been the case elsewhere. Indeed, the fact that the Council of Nicaea in 325 found it necessary to legislate for the participation of other bishops suggests that it was not even accepted everywhere by the early fourth century.²⁷

Similar prescriptions are repeated in the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions and in the canons of other Councils.³⁰ There might be a clue to the origin of this practice in the Apostolic Church Order, where, in situations in which there exist less than twelve potential candidates for the position of bishop within a community, a neighboring church is to be asked to send three men to examine those candidates, although obviously in this case not being themselves bishops.³¹ A minimum of two or three witnesses to determine a case was a longstanding biblical tradition (see, e.g., Deut 17:6; 19:15; Matt 18:16; 2 Cor 13:1; 1 Tim 5:19).

As far as presbyters and deacons were concerned, Cyprian’s normal practice was to consult the clergy and people before making a new appointment, but in exceptional circumstances he dispensed with this. In this way he ordained Numidicus the confessor as a presbyter to help replace those who had lapsed under persecution (Epistula 40); and he ordained two other confessors, Aurelius and Celerinus, as readers because “divine approval” had already preceded their appointment, and he intended both of them to become presbyters eventually. In the case of Aurelius he adds that it was done “by me and my colleagues who were then present,” presumably meaning some clergy of the diocese. We learn from what he says that it was readers here and not deacons who were entrusted with the reading of the gospel (Epistulae 38; 39). He also speaks of making a certain Saturus a reader and the confessor Optatus a subdeacon, the former having already been entrusted with the task of reading on Easter Day and the latter having already been appointed as one of the readers for the presbyters who instructed the catechumens (Epistula 29).³²

Cyprian’s willingness to dispense with the advice of the clergy and people may not simply be occasioned by these particular situations of necessity, however, but may be connected to a broader change in his attitude toward his presbyters. Although originally having regarded them as his counselors whom he consulted on a range of matters, he came instead to treat them more firmly as his inferiors after he had to resist attempts by some of them to act independently of him in permitting the reconciliation of those who had lapsed under persecution.³³ This view of presbyters as the bishop’s subordinates increasingly became the norm everywhere thereafter. On the other hand, the situation in North Africa was complicated by the existences of bodies of lay seniores, “elders,” in the churches. Unknown anywhere else, they continued to be an integral part of both the Donatist and the Catholic churches in North Africa in the fourth and fifth centuries and seem to have constituted an advisory council to the bishop in administrative and disciplinary matters. Because they were unique to this region, it has been concluded that they arose out of the particular forms of leadership that were traditional in African culture.³⁴

The relationship between the orders of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, and the relative functions to be exercised by each, continued to be a matter of contention in the fourth century. Canon 15 of the Council of Arles (314) observed that deacons “in many places offer [the Eucharist],” and ordered that to stop. Canon 18 directed that deacons “of the city” (probably meaning Rome) were not to presume too much for themselves and ought to do nothing important without a presbyter’s knowledge. Canon 18 of the Council of Nicaea refused to allow them to give communion to presbyters, because it was not permitted that those “who have no right to offer should give the Body of Christ to those who do offer.” They were not to receive communion before the bishop did, as certain deacons were doing. They were to “remain within their own bounds, knowing that they are the ministers of the bishop and the inferiors of the presbyters.” They were to receive communion after the presbyters from the hand of the bishop or a presbyter, and they were not to sit among the presbyters. Canon 20 of the Council of Laodicea (ca. 363) even denied them the right to sit in the presence of a presbyter unless directed to do so by the presbyter. Jerome observed this also to have been the custom at Rome but added that “although bad habits have by degrees so far crept in that I have seen a deacon, in the absence of the bishop, seat himself among the presbyters and at social gatherings give his blessing to them.”³⁵

It seems to have been this increase in power and prestige of deacons, resulting in a challenge to the status of presbyters, which was partly responsible for a reaction among some fourth-century theologians, who stressed the ways in which bishops and presbyters were equal and consequently possessed a shared superiority to deacons. To this may be added their difficulty in finding a clear distinction between presbyters and bishops in New Testament texts. Thus Chrysostom, commenting on 1 Timothy 3:8-10 and noting that the writer had gone directly from speaking about bishops to deacons (apparently having passed over the presbyterate), explained that “the reason of this omission was that between presbyters and bishops there was no great difference. Both had undertaken the office of teachers and presidents in the church, and what he has said concerning bishops is applicable to presbyters. For they are only superior in having the power of ordination, and seem to have no other advantage over presbyters.”³⁶

Jerome adopted a similar point of view: “I am told that someone has been mad enough to put deacons before presbyters, that is, before bishops. For when the Apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops, must not a mere server of tables and of widows be insane to set himself up arrogantly over men through whose prayers the body and blood of Christ are confected?” After citing Philippians 1:1, Acts 20:28, Titus 1:5-7, 1 Timothy 4:14, 1 Peter 5:1-2, 2 John 1, and 3 John 1 in support of his case, Jerome continues: “When subsequently one presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest, this was done to remedy schism and to prevent each individual from rending the church of Christ by drawing it to himself.…For what function, excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter?…All alike are successors of the apostles.”³⁷ Jerome’s contemporary, the anonymous theologian known as Ambrosiaster, also argued that bishops and presbyters shared the same priesthood and that the bishop was the first among presbyters.³⁸

But there were also tensions between episcopal and presbyteral authority. This is particularly evident in fourth-century Rome, with efforts by the bishop to require churches within the city walls presided over by presbyters to use bread already consecrated at the papal mass and to insist on all who were baptized there receiving the post-baptismal laying on of hands and anointing from the bishop and not from presbyters.³⁹ The lack of a narrowly hierarchical understanding of the three offices also seems to persist to some extent in later practice, where a candidate for the episcopate might be elevated directly from the diaconate, without the presbyterate being viewed as a necessary intervening step.⁴⁰

Election of a bishop by the people continued in the West in the fourth century,⁴¹ but in the churches of the East it gradually gave way to election by his fellow bishops alone. So, for example, although Canon 18 of the Council of Ancyra in 314 had preserved the right of the people to reject an episcopal candidate of whom they did not approve, Canon 12 of the Council of Laodicea some fifty years later directed that bishops were to be appointed by the judgment of the metropolitans and neighboring bishops, and Canon 13 stated that their election was not to be committed to the people.⁴² There are also clear signs that the whole process was beginning to be subject to corruption in the new environment in which bishops were now prominent figures in society. Chrysostom complained that different parties supported different candidates for unworthy reasons, such as belonging to an illustrious family or being wealthy, concluding that “many ordinations nowadays do not proceed from the grace of God but from human ambition” (De sacerdotio 3.15; 4.1); and Gregory Nazianzen, after describing an incident at Caesarea in which threats of violence were used in an attempt to secure the ordination to the episcopate of a particular candidate, similarly observed: “I am almost inclined to believe that the civil government is more orderly than ours in which the divine grace is proclaimed.” He went on to commend the election of Athanasius as Bishop of Alexandria in 328 for having taken place “by the vote of the whole people, not in the evil fashion which has since prevailed, nor by means of bloodshed and oppression” (Oratio 15.33–35; 21.8).

Although our sources of information for this period are rather limited, we can see that by the end of the fourth century, most of the characteristics of the ordained ministry with which we are familiar in later centuries were then emerging, even if as yet the relationship between the different orders and their distinctive functions were not yet finally settled. However, development does not seem to have taken place at the same pace everywhere, and so, for example, while Rome and North Africa seem to have established a full complement of minor orders before the middle of the century, that does not seem to have been the case in some other parts of the world.

¹ De exhortatione castitatis 7.3. For further explanation of this passage, see Douglas Powell, “Ordo Presbyterii,” JTS 26 (1975): 292–95; Roland Minnerath, “Le présidence de l’eucharistie chez Tertullien et dans l’Eglise des trois premiers siècles,” in Le Repas de Dieu/Das Mahl Gottes, ed. Christian Grappe (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 271–98, here at 271–76.

² See Pierre van Beneden, Aux origines d’une terminologie sacramentelle: ordo, ordinare, ordinatio dans la littérature chrétienne avant 313 (Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense, 1974), esp. 46–49.

³ See S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Commentariorum in Esaiam Libri I–IX, ed. Marc Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum 73 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963), 198.

⁴ See above, p. 15.

⁵ Apostolic Tradition 4.11. There has been a debate over whether the missing Greek original of the text had the verb hierateuein, “to exercise the priesthood,” or leitourgein, “to minister,” although both have connotations of service in the sanctuary in this context. See Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 48.

⁶ See further Maurice Bévenot, “Tertullian’s Thoughts about the Christian Priesthood,” in Corona Gratiarum, vol. 1 (Bruges: Nijhoff, 1975), 125–37, here at 128–29.

⁷ For evidence of presbyters presiding alone in North Africa, see Cyprian, Epistulae 5.2; 15.1; 16.4; 34.1; and for the same in Rome, see Paul F. Bradshaw, “What Do We Really Know about the Earliest Roman Liturgy?,” forthcoming in SP 53 (2013).

⁸ Epistula 63.14. On the meaning of this, see further John D. Laurance, Priest as Type of Christ: The Leader of the Eucharist in Salvation History according to Cyprian of Carthage (New York: Lang, 1984).

⁹ John Chrysostom, Sermo cum presbyter fuit ordinatus (PG 48:694, 699); see also p. 97 below for one of the Byzantine ordination prayers for a presbyter, which incorporates the phrase “exercise the sacred ministry (hierourgein) of the word.”

¹⁰ See, for example, Anne Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters: Early Christianity and the Liberation of Women (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 182–86; Christine Trevett, “Spiritual Authority and the ‘Heretical’ Woman: Firmilian’s Word to the Church in Carthage,” in Portraits of Authority: Religious Power in Early Christianity, Byzantium and the Christian Orient, ed. J. W. Drijvers and J. W. Watt (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 45–62.

¹¹ Acts of Paul and Thecla 34, 41; Tertullian, De baptismo 17. See also De virginibus velandis 9.2, a work written while he was a Montanist, where he denies women the right to perform any liturgical functions, including teaching, baptizing, and offering the Eucharist.

¹² Alistair Stewart-Sykes, The Apostolic Church Order: The Greek Text with Introduction, Translation and Annotation, Early Christian Studies 10 (Strathfield, NSW: St. Pauls Publications, 2006), esp. 49ff.

¹³ Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, Apostolic Tradition 10, Sahidic text. See also 71–73.

¹⁴ See Charlotte Methuen, “Widows, Bishops and the Struggle for Authority in the Didascalia Apostolorum,” JEH 46 (1995): 197–213; Alistair Stewart-Sykes, The Didascalia Apostolorum: An English Version with Introduction and Annotation (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 63–64.

¹⁵ Didascalia 3.12. See Paul F. Bradshaw, “Women and Baptism in the Didascalia Apostolorum,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 20 (2012): 641–45.

¹⁶ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 6.43.11.

¹⁷ Chrysostom was one of the few to reject this derivation: Homilia in Acta Apostolorum 14 (PG 60:116).

¹⁸ It is worth noting that the Didascalia directs that there are to be as many deacons as are needed (2.34), the additional reference to subdeacons here apparently being an interpolation: see Stewart-Sykes, The Didascalia apostolorum, 157, n. 44.

¹⁹ See Stewart-Sykes, The Apostolic Church Order, 60–61.

²⁰ Canons of Hippolytus 7.

²¹ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 6.29.3–4; English translation from NPNF 2:275.

²² Ibid. 6.43.17. Canon 12 of the Council of Neocaesarea in 315 also prohibits those who had received clinical baptism—i.e., when ill and therefore without the full process of initiation—from being ordained as presbyters because their confession of faith was not voluntary but made through fear of death, although it does allow exceptions if the candidate showed subsequent zeal and faith or if there was a shortage of alternatives.

²³ See further Roger Gryson, “Les élections ecclésiastiques au IIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 68 (1973): 353–404, here at 377–78.

²⁴ On Cyprian and the ordination of bishops, see further Takeo Osawa, Das Bischofseinsetzungsverfahren bei Cyprian (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1983); Alexander W. H. Evers, “Post populi suffragium: Cyprian of Carthage and the Vote of the People in Episcopal Elections,” in Cyprian of Carthage: Studies in His Life, Language and Thought, ed. Henk Bakker, Paul van Geest, and Hans van Loon (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 165–80.

²⁵ Gryson, “Les élections ecclésiastiques au IIIe siècle,” 385, n. 1, favors the latter interpretation.

²⁶ See Albano Vilela, La condition collégiale des prětres au IIIe siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1971), 173–79, and the works cited in n. 5 there.

²⁷ See C. W. Griggs, Early Egyptian Christianity: From Its Origins to 451 C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 132–33.

²⁸ Canon 20 of the Council of Arles, the first interprovincial council in the West, held in 314, had desired the presence of seven bishops in addition to the one presiding, but if this was not possible, then a minimum of three would suffice, thus upholding the validity of the ordination of Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage with only three bishops present against Donatist objections.

²⁹ English translation from NPNF (Series 2) 14:11, 15.

³⁰ Apostolic Constitutions 3.20.1; 8.27; 47.1; Council of Antioch (341), Canon 19.

³¹ Apostolic Church Order 16, in Stewart-Sykes, The Apostolic Church Order, 108–9.

³² On the translation of this text, see Gryson, “Les élections ecclésiastiques au IIIe siècle,” 362, n. 2.

³³ See Vilela, La condition collégiale des prětres au IIIe siècle, 288–303.

³⁴ See W. H. C. Frend, “The seniores laici and the Origins of the Church in North Africa,” JTS 12 (1961): 280–84; Brent D. Shaw, “The Elders of Christian Africa,” in Mélanges offerts en hommage au Révérend Père Étienne Gareau (Quebec: Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1982), 207–26; Alistair Stewart-Sykes, “Ordination Rites and Patronage Systems in Third-Century Africa,” Vigiliae Christianae 56 (2002), 115–30.

³⁵ Jerome, Epistula 146.2; English translation from NPNF (Series 2) 6:289.

³⁶ John Chrysostom, In epistulam I ad Timotheum 11.1; English translation from NPNF 13:441.

³⁷ Jerome, Epistula 146.1; English translation from NPNF (Series 2) 6:288–89.

³⁸ Ambrosiaster, Commentaria, on 1 Timothy 3:10. See further David N. Power, Ministers of Christ and his Church (London: Chapman, 1969), 78–81; Roger E. Reynolds, “Patristic ‘Presbyterianism’ in the Early Medieval Theology of Sacred Orders,” Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983): 311–42, here at 313–16.

³⁹ See Bradshaw, “What Do We Really Know about the Earliest Roman Liturgy?”

⁴⁰ See below, p. 136.

⁴¹ See Peter Norton, Episcopal Elections 250–600: Hierarchy and Popular Will in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

⁴² Interestingly, the ordination prayer for a presbyter in the Apostolic Constitutions states that he has been elected, but “by the vote and judgment of the whole clergy” rather than by the people.

Chapter 3

Ministry and Ordination in the Third and Fourth Centuries