Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

Indeed, scarcely had the last apostle died when St. Ignatius instructs us splendidly concerning the episcopate; to him, about the middle of the second century, certain most ancient catalogues of bishops are added, as well as, toward the end of the same century, St. Irenaeus.

1. St. Ignatius († c. 107) teaches that the threefold grade of the hierarchy is of apostolic origin and institution. Concerning the monarchical episcopate in particular he hands down these things:¹

a) Individual churches are governed by one bishop. Ignatius admonishes the Philadelphians: "Strive, therefore, to use one Eucharist; for one is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup in the unity of His blood, one altar, just as one bishop together with the presbytery and the deacons."² Whence he says that the one bishop Onesimus bears the person of the whole Ephesian church: "I have therefore received in the name of God your whole multitude in Onesimus, a man of inexpressible charity, but your bishop in the flesh."³ And indeed, according to Ignatius, this monarchical episcopate is found everywhere in the world. For although the holy martyr makes express mention only of those bishops whose churches he visited while journeying to Rome, he nevertheless speaks of the episcopal constitution of the church without qualification; nay, he testifies that bishops were established even to the farthest parts of the earth: "The bishops," he says, "established throughout the tracts of the earth (οἱ ἐπίσκοποι, οἱ κατὰ τὰ πέρατα ὁρισθέντες), are in the mind of Jesus Christ."⁴

b) The bishop presides over all ecclesiastical affairs. "It is necessary, therefore, just as you also do, that you do nothing without the bishop."⁵ "The Spirit announced these things, saying: Do nothing without the bishop."⁶ "Apart from the bishop let no one do anything of those things which pertain to the church. Let that Eucharist be held valid which is performed under the bishop or under him to whom he himself has granted it ... It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate the agape; but whatever he has approved, this also is well-pleasing to God."⁷

c) All the faithful and even the whole clergy must be subject to the bishop. "Attend to the bishop, that God also may attend to you."⁸ "All of you obey the bishop, as Jesus Christ obeys the Father ... Wherever the bishop appears, there let the multitude also be, just as wherever Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic Church."⁹ "For when you are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, you seem to me to live not according to man, but according to Jesus Christ."¹⁰ "For it befits each of you, and especially the presbyters, to refresh the bishop in honor of the Father, of Jesus Christ, and of the apostles."¹¹ "It befits you to concur in the mind of the bishop, which you also do. For your memorable presbytery, worthy of God, is so fitted to the bishop as strings to a cithara."¹²

d) The bishop presides over the church in the place and stead of God. "I exhort you to strive to accomplish all things in the concord of God, the bishop presiding in the place of God."¹³ "Let all revere ... the bishop, who is a type of the Father."¹⁴ "Let us strive, therefore, not to resist the bishop, that we may be subject to God ... for whomever the Father of the household sends to govern His family, him we must receive just as the one who sends him. It is manifest, therefore, that one ought to regard the bishop as the Lord Himself."¹⁵ "It is good to honor God and the bishop. He who honors the bishop is honored by God; he who does anything secretly without the bishop serves the devil."¹⁶ "But it befits you also not to make free with the bishop's youth, but in respect of the power of God the Father to impart to him all reverence, just as I have learned that the holy presbyters also do not abuse his manifest youthful condition, but as men prudent in God yield to him — not to him, however, but to the Father of Jesus Christ, the bishop of all. In honor, therefore, of Him who loves us, it befits us to obey without any hypocrisy; for one does not deceive this visible bishop, but strives to deceive the invisible One."¹⁷

By every way and means, therefore, St. Ignatius teaches that bishops in their churches possess the same supreme power of governing which the apostles held after the ascension of Christ. This apostolicity of the episcopate the following also prove irrefutably:

2. The catalogues of bishops. Besides the names of the bishops who, as has been said, governed the various churches while the apostles were still living or scarcely dead, there are at hand several most ancient series of bishops succeeding one another in one and the same church. Such catalogues are extant from the Ephesian, Alexandrian, Antiochene, Jerusalem, and Roman churches.

The catalogue of the Ephesian church is incomplete, to be sure, but absolutely authentic. At Ephesus, therefore, after Paul, Timothy was the first to sit.¹⁸ After him St. John the apostle presided there and died there.¹⁹ His place was held in the time of St. Ignatius by Onesimus.²⁰ In the course of the second century eight bishops, sprung from one and the same family, succeeded Onesimus; of these the last, Polycrates, writing about the year 195, says:²¹

"I too, the least of you all, Polycrates, from the tradition of my kinsmen, some of whom I have even followed [in the episcopate]; for seven of my kinsmen were bishops, and I am the eighth ... I therefore, brethren, being sixty-five years old in the Lord, who have often conferred with the brethren dispersed throughout the whole world ... I could also make mention of the bishops who are with me ... whose names, if I were to write them down, would seem an immense number."²²

Therefore not only was an immense number of bishops found by the year 195, but Polycrates, born c. 130, already had seven predecessors in the episcopate from his own family; nay, from the apostolic age monarchical bishops always presided over the Ephesian church.

Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 324) presents the catalogues of the patriarchal churches of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome.²³ Yet Eusebius himself did not compose them, but copied them from the Chronography of Julius Africanus, who in the year 221 arranged these series of bishops from an older source of the second century. That source comprised the bishops down to Pope Eleutherus (174-189) and is perhaps the very Commentaries of Hegesippus.²⁴ Hegesippus, journeying to Rome under Pope Anicetus (c. 155-166), "visited very many bishops" and through each city investigated the "successions of bishops" (catalogues, series). Coming at length to Rome, he first made a series of the pontiffs down to Anicetus. When the latter died, he completed the catalogue by adding the names of Soter (166-174) and Eleutherus (174-189). Hegesippus, moreover, set such great store by the episcopal catalogues of the individual churches, and especially of the Roman church, because from the apostolic succession of bishops he concludes that the apostolic doctrine is everywhere preserved.²⁵ Whatever, in the end, the critics dispute about the origin and authenticity of these episcopal catalogues, all are easily convinced that the catalogues of the four principal churches already existed in the second century. These catalogues, moreover, by the fact itself prove the absurdity of the adverse opinion about the origin of the episcopate. The adversaries maintain that down to the middle or end of the second century the churches knew no monarchical government of bishops. On the contrary, the most ancient catalogues of bishops: 1°. proclaim that in the middle of the second century no one doubted the apostolic succession of the bishops of the four principal churches; 2°. bring forward the very names and the very series of the bishops who from the apostolic age presided over the four first churches of the Christian world; 3°. testify that the apostolic succession of bishops was already during the whole second century of such value that it was used as an argument and criterion of the apostolicity of the doctrine itself spread through the individual churches. Which St. Irenaeus indeed splendidly confirms.

3. St. Irenaeus about the year 180 wrote his most celebrated work "Adversus haereses". He refutes the Gnostic heresies of the first and second centuries by appealing to the episcopate instituted by the apostles.

And this indeed Irenaeus maintains:

a) In the government of the Church the bishops are the successors of the apostles. For, in order to rout the heresies by a simple fact, Irenaeus says: "All these [heretics] are far later than the bishops to whom the apostles handed over the churches."²⁶ And descending to individual examples, he speaks thus of the Roman bishops: "The blessed apostles, then, founding and building up the church, handed over to Linus the episcopate of administering the church ... After him [Anacletus], in the third place from the apostles, Clement obtains the episcopate ... Next, Xystus was constituted the sixth from the apostles ... Now, in the twelfth place, Eleutherus holds the episcopate from the apostles."²⁷ In this manner of speaking Irenaeus affirms that not only those bishops who were immediately created by the apostles, but also those who were afterwards duly constituted, are the true successors of the apostles in the government of the churches. But in order that it may be established which bishops are duly constituted:

b) The successions of bishops from the apostles down to us can be exhibited: "The tradition of the apostles, then, manifested in the whole world, is present in every church for all to behold who wish to see the truth; and we are able to number those who were instituted bishops by the apostles, and their successors down to us ... For they wished those to be very perfect and irreprehensible in all things whom they left as successors, handing over to them their own place of teaching ... But since it is very long in a volume of this kind to enumerate the successions of all the churches, we confound [the heretics] all, pointing out the tradition which the church of Rome — the greatest, most ancient, and known to all, founded and constituted at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul — has from the apostles, and the faith announced to men, coming down to us through the successions of bishops."²⁸

c) The apostolic succession of bishops is like a token and pledge of the apostolicity of the doctrine preached by the Church: "By this ordination and succession the tradition which is from the apostles in the Church and the proclamation of the truth has come down to us. And this is the fullest proof that it is one and the same life-giving faith which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now and handed down in truth."²⁹ "It behooves us to obey those presbyters who are in the Church, those who have the succession from the apostles; who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the sure charism of truth ... Where, therefore, the gifts of the Lord have been placed, there it behooves us to learn the truth, namely with those in whom is the succession of the Church which is from the apostles."³⁰ "The true knowledge is the teaching of the apostles (ἡ τῶν ἀποστόλων διδαχή) ... according to the successions of the bishops, to whom they [the apostles] handed over the church which is in each place."³¹

From these statements it is evident that the doctrine which holds that the government of each church was entrusted from apostolic institution to one single bishop stands most firmly, according to Irenaeus. Nay, not only according to Irenaeus, but — as Irenaeus intimates — according to the whole Catholic Church and even all the heresies. For in this matter he everywhere invokes the consensus of the whole Catholic Church and appeals to the assent of all the heresies. Whence we conclude that both Catholics and Gnostics of the first and second centuries acknowledged the apostolic origin of the monarchical episcopate. And here we make an end of the argument. For the writers who flourished after the second century — for example Tertullian,³² Clement of Alexandria,³³ Origen,³⁴ St. Cyprian³⁵ and all the rest — extol the "catholic" episcopate, and not even the adversaries themselves dare to deny it. In one only, St. Jerome, do they glory, objecting that he teaches a human origin of the episcopate. But even if they rightfully objected this authority, they would reap no advantage from it, and we should suffer no loss. For since Jerome comes alone and later, his opinion simply does not deserve to be attended to. Whence, for the sake of mere completeness, we recite and weigh the opinion of St. Jerome on the origin of the episcopate. St. Jerome the priest, on a given occasion, attempts to show that the presbyterate wonderfully surpasses the diaconate, and is but slightly subject to the episcopate.³⁶³⁷ To show this, carried away by the heat of the dispute beyond his own measure, he does not restrain his words, but brings forward some things which can indeed be explained in a sound sense, yet afford a handle to an unsound interpretation. This holds especially of the following words, in which the whole opinion of Jerome about the episcopate, set down in various places, is contained: "Let the bishops hear, who have the power of constituting presbyters in each city, under what law the order of the ecclesiastical constitution is held ... The presbyter, therefore, is the same as the bishop [according to the letter to Titus 1, 5-7]; and before partisanship arose in religion at the instigation of the devil, and it was said among the peoples: 'I am of Paul, I of Apollo, I of Cephas',³⁸ the churches were governed by the common counsel of the presbyters. But after each one thought those whom he had baptized to be his own, not Christ's, it was decreed throughout the whole world that one of the presbyters, chosen, should be placed over the rest, to whom all the care of the church should pertain, and that the seeds of schisms should be removed ... As, therefore, the presbyters know that by the custom of the church they are subject to him who has been set over them, so let the bishops know that they are greater than the presbyters more by custom than by the truth of the Lord's disposition, and that they ought to rule the church in common, imitating Moses, who, although he had in his power to preside alone over the people of Israel, chose seventy with whom he might judge the people."³⁹ With these words the holy doctor first delineates the historical development of the episcopate, then establishes a theological conclusion about the episcopate. As to the historical development of the episcopate, Jerome says that at the beginning "presbyter and bishop were the same" and that "the churches were governed by the common counsel of the presbyters". But afterwards, when the Corinthian dissensions had arisen, "it was decreed throughout the whole world that one of the presbyters, chosen, should be placed over the rest, to whom all the care of the church should pertain". Now indeed it is true that at the beginning bishops and presbyters were the same and were called the same, and that the churches were governed by the common counsel of the presbyters, only in that sense in which we have proved that the apostles reserved to themselves the supreme, i. e. episcopal, government in the churches, so that those clerics who, besides the apostles, were called "bishops" were distinguished from the presbyters neither in office nor in power. But that afterwards, on the occasion and by reason of the Corinthian factions, an apostolic decree came forth instituting and introducing everywhere the monarchical episcopate — this Jerome contends less correctly. For nowhere is it read that bishops were created because of dissensions that arose at Corinth or elsewhere; nay, by this assertion Jerome destroys another assertion of his, namely that at first, when Paul wrote to Titus, monarchical bishops were not yet present, although the letter to Titus is later (c. 60) than the first letter to the Corinthians (c. 52-57). This alone is established — as we have shown and as Jerome himself supposes — that while the apostles were still living bishops were gradually set over the various churches, and that, when the apostles had died, a college of bishops succeeded them everywhere in the world. As to the theological conclusion about the episcopate, Jerome says that the bishops "are greater than the presbyters more by custom than by the truth of the Lord's disposition, and ought to rule the church in common, imitating Moses, who, although he had in his power to preside alone over the people of Israel, chose seventy with whom he might judge the people". Certainly Jerome very well admonishes the bishops that, notwithstanding the monarchical right, they should imitate Moses, who himself also of his own accord chose seventy counselors.⁴⁰ He speaks ambiguously, however, in that he says bishops possess the supreme hierarchical power more by the custom of the church than by the Lord's disposition. He should have said precisely that the Lord disposed that the supreme hierarchy granted to the apostles should perdure, without expressly naming bishops; but that by apostolic disposition and custom that hierarchy was handed over to the bishops. In this sense even Jerome is to be understood. For he had stated before that, on the occasion of schisms arising while the apostles were still living, "it was decreed throughout the whole world that one of the presbyters, chosen, should be placed over the rest". Soon after he equates the bishops with Moses, who by divine right had "in his power to preside alone". Elsewhere too Jerome adds: "That we may know that the apostolic traditions were taken from the Old Testament, in that Aaron and his sons and the Levites were in the temple, this to themselves CHAPTER II. ON THE MONARCHICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.

⁴¹

We have now proved that the Church is hierarchically constituted, so that the clergy presides over the laity, and that monarchical bishops, who alone possess the supreme apostolic power of governing, preside over the clergy itself of the individual churches. Now the question is whether individual bishops are absolutely independent in governing their churches, or