In New Testament times,
a presbytery was a group of elders who led the church in each town. Titus was
to appoint presbyters, and those presbyters would together be a presbytery. Since
“elder” and “presbyter” mean the same thing, most histories use “college of
elders” rather than “presbytery”.
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Paul, after telling Titus
to appoint presbyters, gives him the qualifications for a bishop (Titus 1:7-9).
The Greek word for bishop is episkopos.
It means “overseer” or “supervisor”. Thus, the presbyters each filled the
office of “bishop,” and “bishop” and “overseer” (as some Bible versions
translate episkopos) are equivalent.
In the New Testament, or
at least in the writings of Peter and Paul, presbyters (or elders) held the
position of bishop. You can also see this in 1 Peter 5:1-4. Peter tells the
elders that they are to “tend the flock of God” and to “oversee”. The word “oversee”
is the verb form of the noun episkopos
(bishop or overseer). Peter tells elders to oversee because, like Paul, his
elders were also the bishops.
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Paul
and Peter’s churches were led by a college of elders. That is why Paul and
Barnabas “appointed presbyters… in each church” (Acts 14:23). We see another
example of this when Paul summons the elders of the church in Ephesus and
reminds them that they were appointed “overseers” (Acts 20:17-18).
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By
the mid-third century, a new office arose. A bishop in larger cities came to be
known as a “metropolitan”. A metropolitan had the oversight not only of his own
city, but of surrounding smaller towns. Those towns had their own bishops, but
they were subordinate to the metropolitan. The metropolitan’s own city might
also have subordinate bishops.
After
another century, the role of patriarch developed. If you would excuse the
terminology, they were basically super metropolitans. Metropolitans were bishops
who served a city and its surrounding area. Patriarchs were bishops who led
whole regions.
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In
451, the Council of Chalcedon excommunicated Dioscorus, the patriarch of
Alexandria. Many Egyptian churches stayed loyal to him, and today they call
themselves the Coptic Orthodox Church. They call their patriarch “pope” as
well. Other “Orthodox” branches of Christianity are affiliated with the Coptic
pope, including two patriarchs, one in Ethiopia and one in Eritrea. (These Orthodox
churches include the Armenian Apostolic, the Eritrean Orthodox Tawahedo, the
Malankala Orthodox Syrian, and the Syrian Orthodox Churches)
The
Orthodox Church in Russia made the bishop of Moscow a patriarch in 1448, and
Constantinople approved the designation in 1589. Constantinople gave the
approval because Rome split from all the eastern patriarchs in 1054, and event
known as the “Great Schism”.
The
Great Schism had a lot to do with Rome’s Audacious Claim, but the roots of the
schism arose long before the eleventh century. In 476, the Roman Empire lost
the city of Rome and all of Italy to barbarian tribes. By then, the Roman
emperor in Constantinople was an established fixture in the rule of the
churches in the empire. Rome, however, was now outside the empire. The barbarian
tribes who competed for control of Europe were “Christian,” and they accepted
the religious authority of the bishop of Rome, the only patriarch in Western
Europe.
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It was during these
centuries of separation that the Roman bishop became known not only as “patriarch,”
but also as lone claimant to the title “pope”. The word “pope” means simply “papa”.
In the early centuries of the Church, the title was applied to all bishops,
especially in the East. Since the fifth century, the churches of the Roman
Empire have limited the title “papa” to the bishop of Rome. (Shatz, 1996, Papal
Primacy, pp. 28-29)
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For
their very doctrine, after comparison with that of the apostles, will declare
by its own diversity and contrariety, that it had for its author neither an
apostle nor an apostolic man. (Tertullian, c. 200, “Prescription against
Heretics”, ch. 32)
In
this quote, he (Tertullian) points out that having a roll of bishops back to
the apostles will do no good if a church’s doctrine is contrary to the apostles’
doctrine. Then he says there are churches who…
… although they derive not their founder from
apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact
being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are
accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine.
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It
was not enough to show a lineage from the apostles, the church must also have
apostolic doctrine.
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The
Roman Catholic Church claims “full, supreme, and universal power” for its
bishop, even if he has abandoned the faith or possesses no regard for it at
all. Horace Mann, in his history of the tenth-century popes, writes, “Have I
not also the assurance of St. Leo I, the Great, that ‘the dignity of Peter is
not lost even in an unworthy successor?’” (Mann, 1925, The Lives of the Popes,
Vol. IV, p. viii)
Pope
Leo must have turned over in his grave when Mann used his words to defend a
person like Pope John XII. Leo’s sermon was about himself, and he meant that
humble unworthiness which all godly men feel before the perfect love of Our
Lord Jesus Christ (Leo I, 440-661, “Sermons”, Sermon III). He certainly did not
intend to justify a man whose lewd behavior made respectable women afraid to go
to Rome on pilgrimage and whose court was called a brothel! (Mann, 1925, The
Lives of the Popes, Vol. IV, p. 255)
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