The Church of the Holy Spirit

7. The Bishop

Chapter 7 The Bishop 217 I. The Bishop as a Successor to the Senior Presbyter 1. Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est.1 This saying of Pope Stephen contains the basic rule of church life. Nothing new should be introduced ; everything should rest on the tradition of the church. If in the beginning of the second century in the letters of Ignatius we find bishops in the local churches, they could not have appeared there all of a sudden. Even less could they be a concoction of Ignatius himself. The ecclesial mind would not have accepted what did not exist previously. The figure of the bishop from Ignatius’s letters was preceded by the figure of a senior or chief presbyter of the apostolic age. The senior presbyter de facto already possessed all the characteristics of the bishop in Ignatius’s letters. He presided at the head of the local church and at the eucharistic assembly . Nevertheless, the bishop of Ignatius’s letters is not wholly identical with the senior presbyter. Unlike the bishop-presbyters of the New Testament, the bishops we know from Ignatius’s letters did not exist in apostolic times. Among these figures was the one who “offered thanksgiving ,” the senior among them. The bishop of Ignatius’s letters stands apart from presbyters even though a connection between them had not yet been entirely lost. But the bishop-presbyters are no more; rather, there is a bishop and presbyters. The starting point of the transformation of the senior presbyter into a bishop was found in the place that the senior presbyter occupied at the eucharistic assembly. Occupying the central place, he was the one who “offered thanksgiving.” For this reason he became a chief or a senior priest in the midst of the priestly people of God. This did not constitute a special ministry with respect to the priesthood of all the people, but was rather a manifestation of this ministry. The senior presbyter became a bishop when his senior or first position among the nation of priests turned into a special high priestly or hierarchical ministry. This means that the episcopal ministry emerged from the priestly ministry of the people. This ministry was transposed to a person who, always occupying the first place among the presiders of the church and always performing the “offering of thanks,” was de facto already a senior priest, though not yet endowed with a special ministry. If the central place at the eucharistic assembly had not been occupied by the same person but by different persons each time, this transformation of the “offering of thanks” into a special ministry would not have been possible. Thus, the episcopal ministry is founded upon the eucharistic assembly where from the very beginning the central place was always reserved for one and the same person. The connection of the bishop’s ministry with the ministry of the senior presbyter was then preserved. One stood in the place of another without any break of succession between them. Having emerged from the priesthood of the people the high priesthood of the bishop did not overshadow the former.Initially the genetic link between them persisted. The high priesthood of the bishop continued to remain within the range of the people’s priesthood rather than outside of or above it. The bishop was the high priest of a priestly people, for all the members of the church, including presbyters, were priests. The ministry of priesthood remained the same. However , there appeared in it a higher degree of priesthood which, combined with presiding, became a special ministry. The next stage in the development of the original ministry of senior presbyter was the priestly ministry of presbyters which became a second degree of priesthood . The presbyters acquired the status of a second degree of priesthood not only with respect to the bishop but also with respect to the priestly people. As deacons acquired a status of priestly ministry, the third degree of priesthood emerged. Seen in this context the priesthood of bishops, presbyters, and deacons can be regarded as a special priesthood if we understand it not as some heterogeneous priesthood, but as higher degrees of the one priesthood of the people. The segregation of higher degrees of priesthood from the common ministry of the people occurred under the influence of the doctrine of consecration. The latter led to the obscuring in the ecclesial mind of the people’s priestly ministry which had already begun to weaken with the formation...