Christian Ministerial Priesthood: A Search for its Beginnings in the Primary Documents of the Apostolic Fathers (review)

According to the volume preface, this work is a rewrite of the author’s 1970 doctoral thesis which was undertaken at the University of Strasbourg. Though written in English, the text was defended under the French title of “Recherches sur les origines du sacerdoce ministériel chez les pères apostoliques.” A limited distribution of the thesis (25 copies) was made available to designated French libraries according to the common practice of the French university system. Yet a wider publication of the materials was not pursued at the time. Now, just over twenty years later, the volume has recently resurfaced with some limited revisions by the author, and is offered as the first publication of the new Catholic Scholars Press (publisher to the University of San Francisco).

Noll’s original research, under the guidance of Pieter Smulders of Amsterdam, was directed toward an evaluation of Jean Colson’s earlier publication, Ministre de Jésus Christ ou le sacerdoce de l’Évangile (Paris, 1966). The stated objective of Noll’s task was to readdress Colson’s inadequate solution to the question of how “the Old Testament and pagan nomenclature for the priestly class found its way into the Church, and along with it the sacral-cultic conception of priesthood and of Christianity” (pages xiv, 4). It was Noll’s contention at that time, and continues to be in the present volume, that the rise of priestly offices and functions within the third-century church, which ultimately culminated in a widely-recognized and dominant sacral-cultic system by the fourth century, could hardly have occurred ex nihilo. Instead, it is much more likely that the roots of the process already were evident in the late first and early second century and may possibly be identified within the literature of that period, namely, the Apostolic Fathers. In order to limit the focus of his research, Noll has selected those writings which are most likely to offer some direct evidence for this process—1 Clement (the subject of a previous licentiate paper by the author which was prepared in 1968), the letters of Ignatius, the letter of Polycarp, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache.

The volume begins with a brief introduction to the problem of the sacred and profane in early Christianity and to the witness which the texts of the Fathers offer toward the development of this concept within primitive ecclesiology. Noll follows thereafter with a chapter in which he briefly seeks to identify and review general studies which have appeared with reference to this issue since the close of his original research in 1970. The remainder (and majority) of the volume focuses in turn upon each of the texts which have been selected for review. These chapters generally are directed toward the introductory questions of origin, date, and author, then toward specific scholarly problems which often are associated with the text in question, followed finally by a discussion of the specific evidence for ecclesiastical offices and cultic terminology.

Noll’s decisions with regard to each text are summarized at the close of the relevant chapters and once more at the end of the volume, where he draws further conclusions about the role of the priesthood in the early church. Specifically, he does not accept the presence of a mono-episcopacy behind the text of 1 Clement. The references to levitical priesthood which appear in 1 Clement 40–41 are only analogies (as with chapters 37–44 generally) to Christian concerns for some form of institutional order (not for a Christian priesthood). With respect to the letters of Ignatius, Noll insists that there is no clear distinction to be made between the role of “cleric” and “laity” here, though the offices of bishop, presbyter and deacon are obvious. Priesthood is yet to be defined for Ignatius, and the term “high [End Page 387...