A couple of corrections/clarifications to Jason G. Duesing's "A Cousin of Catholicism: The Anglican Understanding of Church Leadership."

I am reading Jason G. Duesing’s interesting contribution to the book, Shepherding God's Flock: Biblical Leadership in the New Testament and Beyond (ed. Benjamin L. Merkle and Thomas Schreiner; Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2014). It is entitled “A Cousin of Catholicism: The Anglican Understanding of Church Leadership.” Deusing is exploring the issue of the dependence of Anglican Ecclesiology on Roman Catholicism. I think I’m going to agree with his overall thesis, but so far I have run up against a couple of things calling for clarification. The author seems to overestimate both the power and influence of the Roman Church in its ability to control things and shape institutions in early centuries of Christianity. We see this, for example, in his statement:

By the late sixth century, the churches throughout the Mediterranean region followed the increasing consensus that the bishop of Rome held greater authority over all other bishops. The bishop of Rome served in succession to the Apostle Peter due to the predominant interpretation of Matthew 16, Peter was given apostolic authority above the other bishops. (p. 226).

Despite their being part of the “Mediterranean region,” however, this was not, and never has been, the case in the Eastern Church. The bishops of Rome were viewed as Peter’s successors, yes, but that was not understood in the East to imply that “he held greater authority over all the bishops,” especially the other four great Episcopal Sees of Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. They may have granted that bishop of Rome, as Peter’s successor, enjoyed a certain primacy, but it was, strictly speaking, primus inter pares that is to say, a primacy that made him “first among equals,” in other words, a primacy that did not include telling other bishops what to do. 

Another point where I would make a clarification is where the author seems to imply that the two-tier New Testament model of Church governance, which consisted of multiple bishops/elders on the one hand and deacons on the other, persisted longer than it did. The author says that “well into the third century the terms for elders and bishops were used interchangeably, even though Ignatius and Cyprian had developed a three-tier model of bishops, elders, and deacons that increasingly became standard.” (p. 226, n. 18) 

In the first place the claim that Ignatius and Cyprian “developed” the three-tier model is misleading, at least insofar as it is taken to mean they came up with the model. When Ignatius wrote his seven letters in the early years of the second century while on his way to his martyrdom at Rome, the three-tier model (one bishop, multiple presbyters, multiple deacons) was indisputably in place in five of the six churches he addressed. The single church he wrote to where doubt remains is, ironically, the Church of Rome. Given the evidence of Ignatius, even many Roman Catholic scholars today grant that Rome followed a multiple elder-bishop model at that time. It cannot be proved, but if it is so, then the three-tier model was already in place in the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, the churches in the very regions where the Apostles John and Paul had labored only a relatively short time before—in the case of John, only a few years before—prior to its introduction in Rome. (Ignatius was certainly a great advocate of the three-tier model, but he didn’t invent it). As for Cyprian, he was born about a century after Ignatius died. As Baptists it is crucial when defending our own ecclesiology to come to grips with how early the three-tier model arose, even among the first-generation disciples of the apostles.

The other difficulty arises in connection with the claim that the terms bishop and elder were used interchangeably well into the third century. If by that the author meant that both terms could be used interchangeably to refer to one and the same ecclesiastical office, then that is simply incorrect. The missing clarification is that even though all bishops were presbyters, not all presbyters were bishops. It is a similar situation to where Peter spoke of himself as a “fellow elder” (1 Peter 5:1), not meaning of course that all elders are apostles. 

So then, if we were led by reading this article to assume that the interchangeability of the terms bishop and presbyter “well into the third century,” in any sense implied the wide-spread persistence of the New Testament two-tier model of leadership as well, we are incorrectly interpreting the evidence.