sanction, since the one passage on which it rests only speaks of two functions in the same office.^723
Whatever may have been the distribution and rotation of duties, Paul expressly mentions ability to
teach among the regular requisites for the episcopal or presbyteral office.^724- The Angels of the Seven Churches in Asia Minor must be regarded as identical with the
presbyter-bishops or local pastors. They represent the presiding presbyters, or the corps of regular
officers, as the responsible messengers of God to the congregation.^725 At the death of Paul and Peter,
under Nero, the congregations were ruled by a college of elders, and if the Apocalypse, as the
majority of critical commentators now hold, was written before the year 70, there was too little
time for a radical change of the organization from a republican to a monarchical form. Even if we
regard the "angels" as single persons, they were evidently confined to a single church, and subject
to St. John; hence, not successors of the apostles, as the latter diocesan bishops claim to be. The
most that can be said is that the angels were congregational, as distinct from diocesan bishops, and
mark one step from the primitive presbyters to the Ignatian bishops, who were likewise
congregational officers, but in a monarchical sense as the heads of the presbytery, bearing a
patriarchal relation to the congregation and being eminently responsible for its spiritual condition.^726 - The nearest approach to the idea of the ancient catholic episcopate may be found in the
unique position of James, the Brother of the Lord. Unlike the apostles, he confined his labors to
the mother church of Jerusalem. In the Jewish Christian traditions of the second century he appears
both as bishop and pope of the church universal.^727 But in fact he was only primus inter pares. In
his last visit to Jerusalem, Paul was received by the body of the presbyters, and to them he gave an
(^723) 1 Tim. 5:17: "Let the elders that rule well (οἱ καλῶς προεστῶτες πρεσβύτεροι) be counted of double honor ( διπλῆς τιμῆς),
especially those who labor in the word and in teaching (ἐν λόγῳ καὶ διδασκαλίᾳ)." Some commentators emphasize καλῶς, some
refer the " double honor" to higher rank and position, others to better remuneration, still others to both.
(^724) 1 Tim. 3:2: "The bishop must be ... apt to teach (διδακτικόν)." The same is implied in Tit. 1:9; Act 20:28; and Heb. 13:17.
Lightfoot takes the right view (p. 192): "Though government was probably the first conception of the office, yet the work of
teaching must have fallen to the presbyters from the very first and have assumed greater prominence as time went on." On the
question of teaching and ruling elders, compare, besides other treatises, Peter Colin Campbell: The Theory of Ruling Eldership
(Edinb. and London, 1866), and two able articles by Dr. R. D. Hitchcock and Dr. E. F. Hatfield (both Presbyterians) in the
"American Presbyterian Review" for April and October, 1868. All these writers dissent from Calvin’s interpretation of 1 Tim.
5:17, as teaching two kinds of presbyters: (1) those who both taught and ruled, and (2) those who ruled only; but Campbell pleads
from 1 Cor. 12:28; Rom. 12:8; and Acts 15:22, 25 for what he calls "Lay Assessors." Dr. Hitchcock holds that the primitive
presbyters were empowered and expected both to teach and to rule. Dr. Hatfield tries to prove that the Christian presbyters, like
the Jewish elders, were only to rule; the office of teaching having been committed to the apostles, evangelists, and other
missionaries. The last was also the view of Dr. Thornwell, of South Carolina (on Ruling Elders), and is advocated in a modified
form by an Oxford scholar of great ability, Vice-Principal Hatch (l.c. Lecture III. pp. 35 sqq., and art ."Priest" in Smith and
Cheetham, II. 1700). He holds that the Christian presbyters, like the Jewish, were at first chiefly officers of discipline, not of
worship, and that the fitness for teaching and soundness in the faith were altogether subordinate to the moral qualities which are
necessary to a governor. He also remarks (p. 1707) that neither Clement nor Ignatius makes any mention of presbyters in
connection with teaching, and that teaching was a delegated function committed to the wiser presbyters.
(^725) Other interpretations of the apocalyptic angels: 1. Heavenly messengers, guardian angels of the several churches. Origen.
Jerome, De Wette, Alford, Bishop Lightfoot. 2. Deputies or clerks of the churches, corresponding to the shelichai of the
synagogues. Vitringa, John Lightfoot, Bengel, Winer. 3. Figurative personifications of the churches. Arethas, Salmasius. 4.
Bishops proper. See my Hist. of the Ap Ch. pp. 537 sqq.
(^726) Rothe, Bunsen, Thiersch, and Bishop Lightfoot trace the institution of episcopacy to the Gentile churches in Asia Minor,
and claim for it some sanction of the surviving apostle John during the mysterious period between a.d. 70 and 100. Neander,
Baur, and Ritschl opposed Rothe’s theory (which created considerable sensation in learned circles at the time). Rothe was not
an Episcopalian, but regarded episcopacy as a temporary historical necessity in the ancient church.
(^727) See §27, pp. 264 sqq.
A.D. 1-100.