The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities

by Alistair C. Stewart

This work provides a new starting point for studying the origins of church offices. Alistair Stewart, a leading authority on early Christianity and a meticulous scholar, provides essential groundwork for historical and theological discussions. Stewart refutes a long-held consensus that church offices emerged from collective leadership at the end of the first century. He argues that governance by elders was unknown in the first centuries and that bishops emerged at the beginning of the church; however, they were nothing like bishops of a later period. The church offices as presently known emerged in the late second century. Stewart debunks widespread assumptions and misunderstandings, offers carefully nuanced readings of the ancient evidence, and fully interacts with pertinent secondary scholarship.

416 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2014

About the author

Alistair C. Stewart (PhD, University of Birmingham) is team vicar of Upton-cum-Chalvey, Slough, England, and visiting scholar of Sarum College in Salisbury, England. Recognized as a leading expert on early Christian liturgy and polity, he is the author or editor of a dozen books.

Reviews

[Matthew Colvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Massive erudition, massive conjecture, massive bibliography. This is the new state of the art in studies of the origins of office in the early church, eclipsing Burtchaell’s _From Synagogue to Church_ while also soundly refuting its conclusions.

Stewart is a master of his sources and also of the secondary scholarship. He advances as his central thesis that the first churches were house churches; their leaders’ remit was primarily to preside over the eucharistic meal or agape as a means of charity; the term for these house-church leaders was “episkopoi”; these are the “original bishops” of the book’s title. They were assisted by diakonoi. At a city-wide level, these episkopoi would have been referred to as “presbyteroi kata polin”. This original household-by-household organization was later changed as churches joined together in associations, and later in city-wide federations, leading eventually to monepiscopacy.

Stewart thoroughly refutes the old consensus, going back from Burtchaell and Beckwith to Lightfoot, Vitringa, and Stillingfleet, that held that the church’s organization was modeled on, or derived from, the governance of the Jewish synagogue by presbyteroi. There is no evidence — and I can attest that Stewart is right about this — that synagogues were ever governed by boards of elders; nor is there any plausible account to be gleaned from the ancient sources that might explain how Christians came to adopt a synagogal model. Rather, the sources are full of overt references to house churches, and show many traces of the development of assocation and federation.

Stewart offers fairly convincing readings of most of the central texts. It is a revelation to find that Ignatius’ “do nothing without the bishop” and “let that be accounted a valid eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop or one whom he appoints” are not urging the supremacy of prelates, but protecting the integrity of the church’s charitable agape or eucharist against potentially problematic private patronage.

Having wrestled with these texts for nearly 20 years, I can state that Stewart’s exegesis is more persuasive than most of his rivals. I do not agree with all his conclusions, however. His handling of the pastoral epistles and the position of Timothy and Titus is inadequate. Though he does a fair job with those letters’ instructions concerning episkopoi and diakonoi, his handling of the apostolate and its extension in these emissaries of Paul fails to make sense of the situation described, or of the massive power and authority that these legates of Paul are charged to exercise. I am also not persuaded of his conclusions about presbyteroi kata polin, since it seems to me that he has not parsed Titus 1:5 correctly.

Despite these shortcomings, Stewart’s central proposal has many outstanding virtues: it is quite stark in its otherness; is the best fit yet for the data we have; is historically plausible; is utterly free from ecclesiastical and theological parti pris; and offers no comfort whatsoever to partisans of various modern church polities seeking aboriginal pedigree for either jure divino monepiscopacy in “apostolic succession” or for primitive presbyterial government.

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a work of truly impressive scholarship which sets forth a thesis I had not heard before. I am not familiar with the relevant literature, with which the author copiously interacts, so I am not in the best position to evaluate it. Nevertheless, his central contention--that the bishop was primarily responsible for distribution of the eucharist, an "economic" responsibility--strikes me as quite plausible. Further, explaining presbytyrs with reference to citywide federative models of churches goes some way to explaining a lot of the NT data. I think that Benjamin L. Merkle is right, however, to criticize some of the Scriptural lacunae in Stewart's argument (namely James 5:14 in particular). My other major criticism is that this book is extremely dry, and not particularly well-organized. i had a hard time summarizing the overall structure and shape of his argument once I got to the end of the book. Definitely not for anyone but the reader extremely interested in this specific topic.