The Rise of the Monarchical Bishop (a.k.a Sr Pastor)

For one of my classes at school this semester, "History of Christianity I," I have written a paper that I feel very passionate about. The name of this paper is "The Rise of the Monarchical Bishops in the Ancient Church" (a.k.a Senior Pastors) which dicuses the development of the office of bishop from the New Testament model of a college of elders to the Roman Catholic monarchical bishop by the end of the second century. I believe strongly that the development that Christianity saw in the centuries following the New Testament in its church government to be erroneous, and that these errors continue today in many churches. In this paper, I discuss these things, and it can be read by following the link below:http://www.christiansteps.com/doctrine/paper-chh323.htmlSadly, I could not discuss all things I would like to have discussed in this paper due to space limitations my professor assigned (The paper had to be 8-10 pages long).Look forward to your input.

I agree with the basic idea of the paper, but I have too much going on (read: Herodotus, Hebrew, and Middle Egyptian) to check it any time soon. I will give my thoughts when I get a chance to read it though.

Hi Jason, This theme has been one of my most studied for over 40 years. The simplicity and power of the early church in its unity and variety is a constant challenge and encouragement. Just a few comments…Your paper“It is likely that in order to survive the onslaught of persecution and heresy, the Church increasingly rallied around and elevated the authority of its leadership.”If this is so, and I suspect it is, it was the exact opposite of God’s original strategy. F F Bruce once wrote that “the early church was designed for catastrophe”. If you have an hierarchical structure all you need to is capture/defile the head and the defilement quickly flows through the entire organisation. This is one of the reasons the Internet works as an open network; destroy one part and the messages reroute to find their destination. So with the early church, destroy one part and the inter-dependence of their fellowship just adopted a different route. Any other strategy is vulnerable here.I would like to recommend a couple of books which will give you even more ammunition for your thesis.The Churches of God. G H LangThis book discusses, "the Constitution, Government, Discipline, and Ministry of the Church of God and the Principles and Practice of Service in the Gospel".This is available second-hand but the prices are crazy. Your college library might have a copy?The Organisation of the Early Church. Edwin HatchThe Organization of the Early Christian Churches: Eight Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford, in the Year 1880. This was reprinted in 1999 and can be bought from amazon.com. It is a goldfield and a minefield. Even better, as unrefined ore, than Lang. Lang quotes him regularly. It is wonderful that this book is back in print. It will cost you about $25. I have never worked out why this course of lectures never caused an organisational explosion in the Anglican church.Good huntingPhilologos

Philo, I just thought I would mention that it wasn't my paper, but Preaching's paper.

Your paper“It is likely that in order to survive the onslaught of persecution and heresy, the Church increasingly rallied around and elevated the authority of its leadership.”If this is so, and I suspect it is, it was the exact opposite of God’s original strategySt Jerome, in his commentary on Titus said the following: Hence a presbyter is the same as a bishop, and before ambition came into religion, by the prompting of the devil, and people began to say: ‘I belong to Paul: I to Apollo; I to Cephas,’ the churches were governed by the direction of presbyters, acting as a body. But when each presbyter began to suppose that those whom he had baptized belonged to him, rather than to Christ, it was decreed in the whole Church that one of the presbyters should be chosen to preside over the others, and that the whole responsibility for the Church should devolved on him, so that the seeds of schism should be removed. So, I think the entire persecution/heresy bit had quite an influence on the development of the monarchical bishop. However, pride and ambition might have had something to do with it as well. Moreso in the latter periods of time than the earlier.F F Bruce once wrote that “the early church was designed for catastrophe”. If you have an hierarchical structure all you need to is capture/defile the head and the defilement quickly flows through the entire organisation.Bruce always has some good quotes. And indeed, that is clearly a problem with the hierarchical structure. However, some folks also argue that is the strength of a hierarchy as well. A hierarchy allows you to easier isolate a heresy and deal with it should it infect some of the leadership. It's somewhat paradoxal. However, if Christ would've thought a hierarchy was needed, I think He would've set it up. However, Christ didn't intend for us to control the Church, and remove Him from shepherding it. That is what the hierarchy tries to do.Btw, I tried finding the lang book on sites like Alibris.com , but they run for $70+. I found the other book on Amazon pretty cheap though. I might look into that for future study.

"Btw, I tried finding the lang book on sites like Alibris.com , but they run for $70+. I found the other book on Amazon pretty cheap though. I might look into that for future study."If you like to have your sources docuemented, Hatch is your man.