The Development of Institutional Organization in the Early Church

by Bruce M. Metzger

Historical evidence shows that the early church underwent a gradual development, so that what originally was one people of God eventually became a hierarchial organization. At first the whole church, taking over the terminology of the Old Testament, called itself the Laos tou theou, the people of God. In the course of time we discover that the adjective laicos came to designate those members of the church that we would call today the laity, those members who had not received ordination. Thus there developed a great divide between the clergy on the one hand and the laity on the other. Solemn ordination or consecration by the laying on of hands was the form of admission into the several orders. These developed further into the greater orders—the diaconate, the presbyterate, the episcopate—which were held to be of divine institution. Under these greater orders were the minor orders of a later date, ranging from that of the subdeacon to the following: the lectors in charge of reading the scriptures in the assembly and of taking care of the church books; the acolytes, who were followers of the bishops in their official duties and processions, who carried the bread and the water and lit the candles; the exorcists, who by prayer and the laying on of hands cast out the evil spirits from the catechumens and frequently assisted in the ritual of baptism; the precentors or cantors, who took charge of the musical parts of the liturgy, singing of the psalms, the benedictions, the responses, etc.; the sextons, who took care of the religious meeting rooms and at a later period had charge also of the church grounds; and a variety of other suborders.

Such are the chief external changes in the growth or organization. It is necessary to consider some of the inner motives and inner forces that led to so great a differentiation within the one people of God, producing these several ranks and levels of clergy and their assistants. As might be expected, scholars are not in agreement concerning the identification of these inner forces and motives that led to the growth of the ministry. In fact, very basic differences exist as to the nature of the church itself. On the one hand, some have held—particularly persons concerned chiefly with studying the individual and his religious psychology—that the primitive church and its organization involved nothing more than a group of believers united by external circumstances. They assume that the following is the order of priority: that the individual existed before the local congregation and that the local congregation existed before the universal church. They assume also that ecclesiastial officers and ministries were regarded purely as peripheral to Christianity—that they were concerned solely with administrative duties and the maintenance of order. Some of these people think that the spirit and the enthusiasm working in the earliest phase of the church did not fundamentally need any form or definite channel. The theory is that the inward spontaneity gradually yielded to the necessity of having a cohesive and regulative organization which was primarily administrative or juridical in nature, and this gave it something of a secular stance. Regular meetings and the practical needs of community life called for the institution of certain offices. It was only when the anticipated return of Christ did not happen and the church began to establish itself in the world that the ordained ministers began to be accepted as something essential to the life of the church. The result, so it is held, was a wide variety in the organization in the church based solely on considerations of practical expediency.

Doubtless there are some features of this picture that are valid, but there are other elements that need to be re-evaluated. For one thing, the key to the origin and nature of the church has been found to lie in Christ’s own awareness that He was the Messiah, the Son of Man coming to gather and redeem the people of God. Around Him and among those whom He called to follow Him the kingdom of God took shape. There is reason to believe that Christ did not base His entire teaching on the supposition of the immediate parousia or the end of the age. There are sayings of His which imply an interval between His death and His return on the Day of Judgment. For example, the parable of the wheat and the tares certainly suggests a rather extended period of maturation of both the good and the evil prior to the Day of Judgment. Furthermore, the institution of the Lord’s Supper is one of those signs that shows that Christ expected the new way of life to be embodied in and about His person and that this should continue during the interim period.

The church, then, is part of our Lord’s deliberate purpose. It is not a “happenstance.” It contains and continues an eschatological community of those whom Christ gathered about Himself during His life on earth. Therefore, the church created by Christ Himself is universal, yet appearing in the world in visible form, and is prior to its manifestation in local congregations. In other words, we may make the following points: First, the concept of “church” belongs primarily to a religious and not merely to a sociological or institutional dimension. As the body of Christ and as the Messianic bride invited to participate in the gifts of the Kingdom, the church is not merely a fellowship of persons of good will, a purely voluntary association, a social club. Second, the church is represented in the New Testament as a living organism whose unity arises from its relation to one God and one Lord Jesus Christ (e.g. Eph. 4:1–6). The church is not the property of the believers nor do the expressions, “My church,” or, “Our church,” reflect the New Testament emphasis upon the divine origin of the church as the ecclesia of God. Its members are knit together by a deeper than merely sociological kinship, and all their talents and services are regarded as a continuation of the life and activity of Christ Himself. For even after His resurrection Christ still works among mankind and offers them a way to salvation from and through their earthly conditions. Third, in the church human divisions and distinctions disappear (e.g. Gal. 3:28). “… there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (cf. Col. 3:11). Although local communities of believers were under the guidance of apostles, teachers, or bishops and other leaders, the church as a whole is described as “a brotherhood” (1 Peter 2:17; 5:9) in which nothing is known of sacerdotal grace or of an institutional hierarchy that separates laymen from clergy. All who belong to Christ are equipped for work in His service (Ephesians 4:12). This is strikingly stated in the words of Father Hans Kung in his provocative book entitled, The Church: “The priesthood of all believers consists in the calling of the faithful to witness to God and his will before the world and to offer up their lives in the service of the world. It is God who creates this priesthood and hence creates fellowship among believers.” He continues, “The priesthood of all believers is the fellowship in which each Christian, instead of living to himself, lives before God for others and is in turn supported by others. Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fullfill the law of Christ’ Gal. 6:2.” (p. 381).

History leaves no record of any distinctively set-apart church buildings in the first and second centuries. The first sanctuary of which we have knowledge dates from towards the end of the second century or the beginning of the third. The assemblies of the Christian believers prior to this time met in house-churches. It is appropriate to ask how the early house-churches contributed to the experience of this fellowship among the individual Christian believers. New Testament accounts give us clues; for example, prayer was held in the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12). There is the implication that this was not a meeting place of the whole church in Jerusalem but of only one group within the city. As the number of Christians increased in Jerusalem it would become increasingly difficult for all the believers to meet in one house. For all ordinary occasions, at least, the total body was split into smaller groups which could be accommodated in private homes. As Christianity spread the same development would occur in other cities. When the synagogue was closed to Christian preachers—and this seems to have occurred early in the development of Paul’s work in the cities that he visited—then the house-church dominated the situation. Only rarely could a public assembly hall be obtained. We read of at least one such occasion in Acts 19:9 when the lecture hall of Tyrannus was engaged in the city of Ephesus. Therefore, if a locality other than the market-place was to be had it would have to be in the home of believers. Priscilla and Aquila made their home a center of Christian fellowship and teaching (1 Cor. 16:19; Rom. 16:5). In the city of Laodicea a Christian woman named Nymphas was hostess to a group of believers (Col. 4:15). In the city of Colosse Philemon made available his home as a center for a band of disciples (Phil. 2).

It is necessary to investigate what were some of the benefits as well as some of the limitations that were characteristic of these early house-churches where the fellowship of the believers took place. First, the house-church enabled followers of Jesus to have a distinctively Christian worship and fellowship from the very first days of the Apostolic Age. It was the hospitality of these homes which made possible Christian worship—the common meals and the courage-sustaining fellowship of the group. Second, the large part played by the house-churches affords a partial explanation for the great attention paid to family life in the letters of Paul and in other Christian writings. On many occasions entire households, including, no doubt, slaves in some instances, would come into the church as a unit. We must not regard it as a mere formality, therefore, when Paul speaks in his letters pointedly to husbands, wives, fathers, children, masters, and slaves concerning their relations and obligations, because the larger homes were as much under the eye of Christians as is the minister’s home in a small town today. Third, the existence of several house-churches in one city goes far to explain the tendency to party strife in the apostolic age. This is seen in the various schismatic groups in Corinth, for example, when various persons said, I am of Paul, I am of Cephas, I am of Apollos, I am of Christ; each group would have its own feelings of pride and prestige. Perhaps a squabble between Euodias and Syntyche in the church at Philippi had its origin in a conflict of personalities in the local house-church or churches (Phil 4:2). Fourth, a study of the house-church situation also throws light upon the social status of early Christians. Homes that were large enough to accommodate a considerable number of Christians at worship in one assembly must have been owned by persons of some considerable financial means. They would not need to have been extremely wealthy, but certainly in some of the early churches there were Christian believers that belonged not to the dispossessed proletariat but to the upper income brackets as well. So this gives us at least a little insight as to the range of the social status of early Christians. Fifth, the development of church polity can never be understood without reference to the house-churches. The host of such a group was almost inevitably a man of some education with a fairly broad background and at least some administrative ability. The very fact that he owned a house large enough to accommodate a great number of people would suggest that he had some qualities that could be useful in leadership. And so the house-church became a training ground for the Christian leaders; everything in such a situation favored the emergence of that host as the most prominent and influential member of the group. And this would in turn be a step to the presbyterate and then to the monarchical episcopate.

In the succeeding centuries we find evidence of the basic equality among these several local congregations of believers. We find, for example, instances preserved among the Greek papyri of Egypt of what we might call today certificates of transfer of church membership. I have looked at quite a number of these and they fall into a certain pattern or stereotyped formula in which the leader of the church at this place commends to the leader of the church in another city such and such a person or persons who are, as we would say today, “in good and regular standing” in that church, transferring their membership to the other one. To the best of my knowledge no such document has ever been found regarding the transfer of membership from one to another local congregation of a mystery religion —such as the Mithraic mystery cult, or the cult of Isis, or the Cybele mysteries.

Such is a picture of the local congregations in the Greco-Roman world of the first couple of centuries. If one were to ask a Christian believer at that time where is the church, where is the ecclesia tou theou, the answer probably would have been to quote the words of Christ, “Where two or three are gathered together in His name, there is the church.” This understanding: “…that I am in the midst of them,” (Matt. 18:20) with a triumphant assertion that the Lord has risen indeed and is alive forever more, would constitute the victorious creed of the earliest, stage of the church. The Lord is in the midst of those who believe on Him. He who is, and was, and is to come and who is working everywhere, is present wherever two or three are gathered together in His name. The answer then would be, “Where Christ is there is the church.”

It would also probably be pointed out that His word in Matthew 20:26 is appropriate for the church, that “the princes of this world exercise dominion and authority, but it shall not be so among you.” That is, the Christian would have said that Christ is the one who binds and rules over the members of His church solely through the gifts of grace, the charismata, that are bestowed by Him through the Spirit, so that to one believer is given the gift of teaching, to another the gift of interpretation, to the third the gift of comforting. The gift of teaching is at the same time the gift of government. God’s people, the ecclesia, is to be ruled not by man’s word but by the word of God proclaimed by the divinely gifted teacher. And the ecclesia obeys the word of the teacher only if and so far as it recognizes therein the word of God. Thus the apostles built up and guided the church through the word. Besides the apostles, others called prophets and teachers were stirred up by God (1 Cor. 12:28, etc.). Thus when the preaching of the word committed to these people was proclaimed, the apostle can write, “When you come together every one of you has a hymn, or lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” (1 Cor. 14:26). Although Paul has to write to correct aberrations at Corinth, in every one of these instances the word of God was alive to the edifying of the church, even if the special gifts of the apostle and prophet or teacher had not been given indiscriminately to all. Paul recognizes that the word of God is alive in every congregation of believers. The church has therefore no ultimate need of any one class of officials. All believers, by the Holy Spirit living within them, are bearers of the keys of heaven and of the royal power which is in the house of God given by the word of God.

Of these several charismatic gifts of the Spirit to which Paul refers, that gift known as prophesying appears to have been favored by the apostle as best suited for the building up of the church. At the conclusion of his great hymn of Christian love in 1 Corinthians 13, the apostle continues in the first verse of Chapter 14, “Make love your aim and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” Indeed, the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians goes so far as to declare that the church was built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:20).

Who were these prophets? What was their work? Well, first of all, the writer does not think of them as Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles; otherwise he would have said that the church is built upon the prophets and the apostles. No, he puts it the other way—the church is built upon the apostles and prophets, that is, upon the New Testament apostles and the New Testament prophets. Primitive Christian prophecy is the inspired speech of charismatic persons through whom God’s plan of salvation for the world and the community and His will for the lives of individual Christians would be made known. The prophet knows something of the divine mysteries (1 Cor. 13:2). Agabus, for example, prophesied the great famine which would come on the world (Acts 11:28). Paul predicts the fate that awaits him at Jerusalem (Acts 21:10, 11). Nevertheless, primitive Christianity does not consist only in the disclosure of future events through prophets. The prophet speaks out on contemporary issues. Thus, he tells what must be done in specific situations. He blames and censures. He praises and encourages. His preaching contains administration and comfort, the call to repentance as well as that of promise (1 Cor. 14:3). The work of the prophet, then, in the New Testament is not just for the replacement of the human ego by a divine, prophetic rapture. Words like the word “soothsayer,” or words like the expression “manic possession,” are not used in primitive Christian prophecy. This does not mean, of course, that the New Testament prophets did not have ecstatic experiences. That they did may be deduced from the narrative in Acts 2 about the Day of Pentecost, from Acts 4:31, and so on. But prophecy is more important and ranks higher than speaking in tongues, the gift of glossolalia (cf. 1 Cor. 14:1, 5, 39).

At the same time, according to Paul, the prophet in the congregation is not just a seer but he is a recipient and preacher of the Word of God. He is not one who is possessed by God and who has lost control over his senses and has to do what the indwelling power orders. The idea of alienation and ravings are foreign to the New Testament prophet. The primitive Christian prophet is a man of full self-awareness. When he is speaking he can break off if a revelation is given to someone else. When two or three prophets have spoken in the congregation others may remain silent even though something is revealed to them (1 Cor. 14:29 f.). The prophets, however, cannot influence the revelation itself. This comes from God with no co-operation on their part; the proclamation is of what is revealed to them, and this is in accordance with their own will.

Paul gives preference, as already noted, to prophecy over the other charismatic gifts of grace (1 Cor. 14:1). The prophets are repeatedly mentioned directly after the apostles. Not only in Ephesians but elsewhere the church is also said to be built upon the apostles and prophets (1 Cor. 12:28, 29; Rev. 18:20, etc.). The function of the apostle was to bear testimony to historical happenings in the life and the ministry of Jesus, namely what Jesus said and did on this or that occasion in the past. The function of the prophet was to interpret the meaning of what Christ had said in the past at that place and time, for the present circumstances in the church and the life of the individual Christian here and now. So, we can see the co-ordinate balance of the work of apostles and prophets: apostles bearing testimony as to what had happened, and prophets explaining the import of this or that word in Christ’s ministry for the present events at Corinth, at Philippi, at Rome, etc.

Difficulties emerged, however, when false prophets appeared, who in their prophesying brought in all kinds of false teachings. Already in the New Testament there are warnings against the emergence of counterfeit prophecy. In 1 John 4:1–3, the author advises his readers, “Test the spirits, whether they are of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world,” and lead many astray. This is in fulfillment of what Christ predicted in the Sermon on the Mount, when He warned, “Beware of false prophets who will come to you dressed in sheeps’ clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7:15).

The early church had to devise some means of discriminating between the true and the counterfeit prophet. A little document called the Didache, which is a church manual of the early second century, provides a simple rule of thumb that would discriminate between those who were fakers and those who were true. This document directs that if a person comes to one’s home and says, “I have been sent by God to preach the Gospel in this community; I would like food and lodging while I’m here,” one should take him in and show hospitality. If he stays another day, that is all right, says the Didache. He may even stay three days, but if he wants to continue living there, taking advantage of his host’s generosity, one should mark him as a false prophet and have nothing to do with him. This kind of simple rule of thumb would help in some cases but not in every case. The Didache also says that consistancy of teaching and conduct is characteristic of a true prophet. He who does not practice what he preaches is a false prophet (Did. 11:10). Above all, complete unselfishness is required of the prophet. If a man orders a special kind of food for himself, and especially if he asks for money to meet his personal requirement, he is a false prophet. The number of such imposters, according to the Didache, will increase in the last days.

In this connection one should give attention to a very interesting second-century treatise, written not by a Christian but by a pagan named Lucian. Lucian was a pagan skeptic who was born in Samosata and traveled about widely. He gained a good university education and wrote many witty essays that have come down to us today. I suppose in his day he was something like the late H. L. Menkin of Baltimore, the agnostic iconoclastic editor of the now defunct American Mercury Magazine. Lucian was eager to expose any quack, any kind of charlatan. He wanted nothing to do with chicanery or trickery. One of his books is entitled Alexander, the False Prophet. This book gives us some understanding of the kind of thing that early Christians had to face. A man named Alexander in his travels came to a small town in Asia Minor called Abonuteichos. He was looking for a place to set up shop as prophet of Apollo. He made a survey (a Gallup poll I suppose) of the residents living in Abonuteichos and considering that they were sufficiently gullible, decided to settle down there. He prepared his publicity in this way: having obtained an ostrich egg, he cracked open one end carefully and removed the contents. Next he took a small live snake and put it inside the empty shell, affixing a wad of sealing wax over the hole. Then at nighttime he went to the crossroads of the town of Abonuteichos and began to dig away the dust and mud and buried this egg that he had prepared. The next day, dressed in long saffron-colored robes typical of pagan prophets of that time and with his long hair flowing, he ran through the streets, clapping his hands and crying, “The god Apollo has sent me to be a prophet in your midst. You should consider yourselves very fortunate that Apollo has decided to have a prophet right here at hand for you to consult in Abonuteichos.” Having gathered a crowd together he brought them to the crossroads and, after foaming at the mouth—for he had put some kind of soap in his mouth and made bubbles come out at the appropriate time—he fell down and scratched away the earth. Everybody was astounded when he took up the egg and held it before the crowd. Then, when he cracked it open and took out the live serpent, everybody knew that the god Apollo had authenticated Alexander, because the serpent was a dedicated mascot, as it were, of the god Apollo. This was a signal occurrence of divine inspiration, giving the seal of approval to Alexander. Well, as could be expected, the citizens of Abonuteichos were greatly impressed.

Alexander set up a tent and gave advice to persons with problems in marriage, love, business—anything. The problem was written out on a piece of papyrus, folded up, and sealed with sealing wax. Handed in one day, the questioner was to come back in a day or two and the answer was given in public. The person was asked, “This has not been opened, has it? It is still sealed? Open it, but don’t read it out, and I will tell you what Apollo has told me of the contents, and I will also give his answer to your problem.” According to Lucian’s account, this was not done free for nothing, but Alexander made a charge for his prophecies and soon grew rich. He even had to employ money changers, because people would come from other lands with currencies different from the local currency. Even such a person as a patrician nobleman from Rome had sailed over the sea and traveled to this little backwoods town of Abonuteichos to consult Alexander! Alexander had obtained a tame python which he would wrap around his body, and on occasion he would put the head of the python under his armpit while holding in his hand a paper-mache’ head of a serpent. The lower jaw was hinged to operate by long horse hairs so that it could be made to open and close in the manner of a ventriloquist’s dummy. The windpipe of a crane, connected at the back of the head of this “serpent,” extended behind the curtain so that an accomplice behind the curtain could speak through the artificial head. In the dim light of the tent Alexander’s accomplice would give out what Apollo had said.

Lucian tells us that he was suspicious that Alexander was a charlatan. On one occasion, when people were passing along in front of Alexander and bending down and kissing the prophet’s hand, Lucian says he bent down and gave his hand a right good bite! Of course Alexander knew then that something was wrong, and said, “Psst! I’d like to talk to you privately for a moment.” So, taking Lucian to one side he said, “I don’t know what you suspect, but I’ll give you a third of all my profits if you promise not to disclose what you imagine might be true.” “No!” replied Lucian; “I will not be bribed; I’m going to write a book about you and expose you !” That’s exactly what he did, and we have that book today exposing the trickery of this false prophet.

Now, that is the kind of thing early Christians had to contend with. The New Testament told them they should show hospitality and entertain strangers. But when people would take advantage of their good nature, and bring all kinds of erroneous teachings as though they were being prompted in this case by the Holy Spirit, what was to be done? The testing of the prophets meant that some sort of government of charismatic ministries needed to be applied. As the church grew in numbers, and especially as the charismatic gifts had counterfeits, gradually the charismatic ministry came to be supplanted by a delegated ministry. We can see the beginnings of this movement, I think, already in the New Testament.

In what follows the discussion will use such terms as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy in connection with the constitution of the early church. I use these terms simply for pedagogic reasons so that we can quickly identify various kinds of church government. The terms monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy come from Aristotle’s Politics, book 3, section 5, where he says very succinctly what is a fact: Either one, or a few, or the many must rule. If that is true in secular affairs it is true also in the church. By using these terms I do not mean to imply that the church constitution or church government depended originally on secular society; rather, we are using these terms for convenience and identification.

In the New Testament a predominantly monarchic administration is found reflected in the congregations that are referred to in what we call the pastoral Epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Here Timothy and Titus obviously play a prominent role, not, however, apart from the support of elders and others. Also in the church at Jerusalem certain tendencies to monarchy can also be discovered, as for example in the person of Peter, and after him James, the Lord’s brother. At times they appear—at one time Peter and at another time James—as spokesman and leader of that congregation. For example, in Acts 15 at the Apostolic Council it is James who sums up and makes the final declaration of the conference. According to tradition preserved by Josephus as well as Eusebius, James remained the high priest or the caliph of the Jewish Christian Church until his death about A.D. 64.

In general, however, the Jerusalem church was dominated by the oligarchy system. We read, for example in the first chapters of Acts, that it was jointly administered by all the apostles (first the eleven and afterwards the twelve when Mattias was elected), and also jointly through the seven “deacons” who were appointed to look after the temporal needs of the widows. There was also a special class of elders present at the Jerusalem church (Acts 11:30, 15:2–22).

Likewise the congregation as a whole had, juridically speaking, a decisive role to play. Such seems to be the case in Acts 1:15–25 at the election of another apostle after the defection of Judas Iscariot. There were 120 Christians of Jerusalem present and that number is not without significance in Jewish constitutional law. According to the Jewish concept a town congregation must have at least 120 men, in order to elect members to the Sanhedrin. While mentioning the number of people present, Luke in the first chapter of Acts shows not only that the election of Matthias was legally correct but also he ascribes considerable importance to the congregation in weighty matters. When the Apostolic Council was held we can also see that the congregation had a share, for “… it seemed good to the apostles and the elders with the whole church to choose men from among them and to send them to Antioch…” with the apostolic decrees (Acts 15:22). Therefore, though the members of the congregation did not take part in the discussion and did not, it seems, vote in the decision, they did ratify and implement the decision. Therefore, it looks as though the Jerusalem church had a mixed or a complex constitution, where inclinations toward monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy were present together without being mutually exclusive or even in conflict.

In the early second century the Didache says, “Elect, therefore, for yourselves bishops and deacons of the Lord, men meek, not lovers of money, truthful and approved for they too minister to you the ministry of the prophets and the teachers.” Later the procedure is not so simple. Distinctions came to be made between the divine vocation, the lay recognition of the call or election, the liturgical formulae, and, finally, the installation. Nevertheless, well into the Constantinian Age the laity still played an important part in the elevation of their bishops. Hippolytus in the Apostolic Tradition records the aforementioned refinements, but he says (chapter 2, section 1) that the bishop is still “elected by all the laity.” Origen observes that the bishop must be ordained “in the presence of the whole laity in order that all may know for certain that the man elected to the priesthood is of the whole people, the most eminent and to avoid any subsequent change of mind or lingering doubt.” And Cyprian makes a similar point. Cyprian, in fact, insists that just as the laity has the power of recognition they also have the power of withdrawing the jurisdiction of an unworthy cleric. So well known was the power of Christian lay people to approve or disapprove their leaders that even the pagan emperor, Alexander Severus, who ruled from 222 to 235, adopted some of the Christians’ methods in selecting officials. He was obviously well acquainted with Christians because he knew the negative form of the Golden Rule and had it written on public pillars. He also had erected in his private chapel a statue of Christ along with statues of Abraham, Apollonius, and Orthus. He adopted from the Christians a practice of posting the names of his nominees to public office for the sake of securing public testimony as to their character, for he said, “It would be unjust, when Christians and Jews observed this custom in announcing the names of those who are to be ordained, that such a precaution should be omitted by us in the case of provincial governors, to whom were committed the lives and fortunes of men.” (Vita Alex., 45, 7).

In the third and fourth centuries, however, the rights of the laity come to be more and more restricted. The earlier right of laymen to baptize came to be restricted even from the time of Tertullian, who says that only in case of dire necessity could a layman baptize. Sermons given publicly by lay persons practically ceased in the third century, though it should be added that provision for lay preaching was made in the Apostolic Constitutions, book 8, section 12. For a. layman to preach in the presence of a bishop was particularly objectionable, on the testimony of Eusebius, Church History, book 6, section 19. The laity’s distinctive right continued to be exercised in the election of the bishop, though this too became gradually circumscribed through the co-operation of other bishops in the province and through the rights of the metropolitan in the east. Similarly the congregation originally had the right to depose a bishop in case of grave shortcomings, a prerogative still exercised in Cyprian’s time, though contested as early as the time of the Roman Bishop Calixtus I (died in 222).

Finally, it needs to be said that even the place in the church sanctuary where it was permitted that laity should sit eventually comes to be defined. A fourth century work, the Apostolic Constitutions, sets forth the following (in book 2, section 57); “The church building is like a ship; in the middle let the bishop’s throne be placed, and at each side of him let the presbytery sit down. Let the deacons stand near at hand, for they are like the mariners, the managers of the ship. With regard to these let the laity sit on the other side with all quietness and in good order. Let the women sit by themselves, they also keeping silence. And in the middle let the reader stand upon some high place. Let him read the books of Moses, of Joshua and the books of Job and Solomon and the prophets. But when two lessons have been read, let some other person sing the hymns of David. Let the people join in the conclusion of the verses. Afterward let our own Acts [the Apostolic Constitutions] be read and the Epistles of Paul, our fellow worker. And afterwards let a deacon or a presbyter read the Gospels. And while the Gospel is being read let all the presbyters and deacons and all the people stand up in great silence. In the next place, let the presbyters one by one, not all together, exhort the people; and the bishop is in the last place, as being the commander. Let the porters stand at the doors of the men and observe them. Let the deaconesses also stand at the portals of the women like shipmen. But if anyone be found sitting out of his place, let him be rebuked by a deacon as a manager of the foreship and be removed into place proper for him. Let the young persons sit by themselves, if there is a place for them, and if not, let them stand upright. But let those that are already stricken in years sit in order. Let the younger women also sit by themselves, if there be a place for them; but if there be not, let them stand behind the other women. Let those women which are married and have children be placed by themselves, … Let the deacons be disposers of these places that everyone of those who come in may go to his proper place and may not sit at the doorway. In like manner let the deacon oversee the people that no one may whisper, nor slumber, nor laugh, nor talk. All ought in the church to stand wisely and soberly and attentively, having their attention fixed on the word of the Lord. After prayer and before the Eucharist then let men give the men, and women give the women, the kiss of the Lord. But let no one do it with deceit, as Judas betrayed the Lord with a kiss.”

By way of summary, we see the development which the whole people of God, the Laos tou theou, underwent in the early church. We find a gradual differentiation of functional differences between clerical offices and the unordained. We find gradation at several levels. The complete clericalization in a graduated series of offices extended from bishop to doorkeeper. And this is reduced finally to the appointment of the special places where each one is to sit in the congregation. There is also the assimilation of the teaching and healing functions in the office of the bishop, with the delegated catechist under his supervision. Earlier teaching and healing had been free or charismatic, and in the ante-Nicene period the teachers had been formed into what was called a choir alongside the clergy. We see also that there was recruitment of a new type of convert in the Constantinian era with an accompanying loss of feeling of a radical distinction between the church and the world. The radical distinction that replaces what in pre-Constantinian times was the distinction between the unconverted and the church—the world and the believers—is now the distinction between those, on the one side, who are ordained as clergy, and the unordained on the other.

Such a development called forth a comment from Chrysostom, who in this post-Constantinian time deplores the diminution of a sense of participation that once was characteristic of the worship held in the house-churches. In the fourth century, when the congregation met in a grand basilica where liturgical responsibilty was confined more and more to certain persons, who “performed” in front of others, there developed a theater-like character of the worship. The laity now bring into the sanctuary, Chrysostom complains, what they practice in the theater, and when the minister makes a good point in his sermon the congregation applauds him. There are references to such applause in more than one sermon of Chrysostom, who rebuked the congregation for bringing the habits of the theater into the church. In one case the stenographer who was taking down the sermon verbatim indicates that the congregation even applauded Chrysostom’s rebuke! Chrysostom movingly recounts the full meaning of the royal priesthood of God in which cleric and laic alike are on the same level—alike in Eucharistic offerings, in communion and prayers for the mutual fortification in Christ, and in the disciplinary functions of the church. Thereupon, Chrysostom challenges his congregation, “Now I have said all this that each of the laity may also keep his attention awake, that we may understand that we are all one body having such differences among ourselves as members with members, and may not throw the whole upon priests, but ourselves so care for the whole church as for a body common to us.” The tone of this passage indicates that Chrysostom was longing for the good old days of the infancy of the church, before fellowship had come to be replaced by organization, and when the work of the Spirit was not yet so regularized, as to result, in some places, in being quenched entirely.