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bishop stands in the place of Christ Himself. " When
ye are obedient to the bishop as to Jesus Christ," he
writes to the Trallians, " it is evident to me that ye
are living not after men, but after Jesus Christ. . .
be ye obedient also to the presbytery as to the
Apostles of Jesus Christ" (ad Trail., n. 2). He also
incidentally tells us that bishops are found in the
Church, even in "the farthest parts of the earth"
(ad Ephes., n. 3). It is out of the question that one
who lived at a period so little removed from the
actual Apostolic Age could have proclaimed this
doctrine in terms such as he employs, had not the
episcopate been universally recognized as of Divine
appointment. It has been seen that Christ not only
established the episcopate in the persons of the
Twelve but, further, created in St. Peter the office
of supreme pastor of the Church. Early Christian
history tells us that before his death, he fixed his
residence at Rome, and ruled the Church there as its
bishop It is from Rome that he dates his first
Epistle, speaking of the city under the name of
Babylon, a designation which St. John also gives
it in the Apocalypse (c. xviii). At Rome, too, he
suffered martyrdom in company with St. Paul,
a. d. 67. The list of his successors in the see is
known, from Linus, Anacletus, and Clement, who
were the first to follow him, down to the reigning
pontiff. The Church has ever seen in the occupant
of the See of Rome the successor of Peter in the
supreme pastorate. (See Pope.)
The evidence thus far considered seems to demon- strate beyond all question that the hierarchical or- ganization of the Church was, in its essential ele- ments, the work of the Apostles themselves; and that to this hierarchy they handed on the charge entrusted to them by Christ of governing the King- dom of God, and of teaching the revealed doctrine. These conclusions are far from being admitted by Prot- estant and other critics. They are unanimous in hold- ing that the idea of a Church — an organized society — is entirely foreign to the teaching of Christ. It is therefore, in their eyes, impossible that Catholicism, if by that term we signify a world-wide institution, bound together by unity of constitution, of doctrine, and of worship, can have been established by the direct action of the Apostles. In the course of the nineteenth century many theories were pro- pounded to account for the transformation of the so-called "Apostolic Christianity" into the Christi- anity of the commencement of the third centurv, when beyond all dispute the Catholic system was firmiy established from one end of the Roman Empire to the other. At the present day (1908) the theories advo- cated by the critics are of a less extravagant nature than those of F. C. Baur (1853) and the Tubingen School, which had so great a vogue in the middle of the nineteenth century. Greater regard is shown for the claims of historical possibility and for the value of early Christian evidences. At the same time it is to be observed that the reconstructions suggested involve the rejection of the Pastoral Epistles as being documents of the second century. It will be sufficient here to notice one or two salient points in the views which now find favour with the best known among non-Catholic writers.
(a) It is held that such official organization as existed in the Christian communities was not re- garded as involving special spiritual gifts, and had but little religious significance. Some writers, as has been seen, believe with lloltzmann that in the episcopi and prctshjitiri, there is simply the synagogal system of &pxovTes and vTypfrai. Others, with Hatch, derive the origin of the episcopate from the fact that certain civic functionaries in the Syrian cities appeal to have borne the title of "episcopi". Pro- fessor Harnack, while agreeing with Hatch as to the origin of the office, differs from him in so far as he
admits that from the first the superintendence of
worship belonged to the functions of the bishop.
The offices of prophet and teacher, it is urged, were
those in which the primitive Church acknowledged
a spiritual significance. These depended entirely
on special charismatic gifts of the Holy Ghost. The
government of the Church in matters of religioii was
thus regarded as a direct Divine rule by the Holy
Spirit, acting through His inspired agents. And
only gradually, it is supposed, did the local ministry
take the place of the prophets and teachers, and
inherit from them the authority once attributed
to the possessors of spiritual gifts alone (cf. Sabatier,
Religions of Authority, p. 24). Even if we prescind
altogether from the evidence considered above, this
theory appears devoid of intrinsic probability. A
direct Divine rule by " charismata " could only result
in confusion, if uncontrolled by any directive power
possessed of superior authority. Such a directive
and regulative authority, to which the exercise of
spiritual gifts was itself subject, existed in the Apos-
tolate, as the New Testament amply shows (I Cor.,
xiv). In the succeeding age a precisely similar
authority is found in the episcopate. Every prin-
ciple of historical criticism demands that the source
of episcopal power should be sought, not in the
"charismata , but, where tradition places it, in the
Apostolate itself.
(b) It is to the crisis occasioned by Gnosticism and Montanism in the second century that these writers attribute the rise of the Catholic system. They say that, in order to combat these heresies, the Church found it necessary to federate itself, and that for this end it established a statutory, so- called "apostolic" faith, and further secured the episcopal supremacy by the fiction of "apostolic succession" (Harnack, Hist, of Dogma, II, ii; Saba- tier, op. cit., pp. 35-59). This view appears to be irreconcilable with the facts of the case. The evi- dence of the Ignatian epistles alone shows that, long before the Gnostic crisis arose, the particular local Churches were conscious of an essential principle of solidarity binding all together into a single system. Moreover, the very fact that these heresies gained no foothold within the Church in any part of the world, but were everywhere recognized as heretical and promptly excluded, suffices to prove that the Apostolic Faith was already clearly known and firmly held, and that the Churches were already organized under an active episcopate. Again, to say that the doctrine of Apostolic succession was invented to cope with these heresies is to overlook the fact that it is asserted in plain terms in the Epistle of Clement, c. xlii.
M. Loisy's theory as to the organization of the Church has attracted so much attention in recent years as to call for a brief notice. In his work. " L'Evangileet TEglise", he accepts many of the views held by critics hostile to Catholicism, and endeavours by a doctrine of development to reconcile them with some form of adhesion to the Church. He urges that the Church is of the nature of an organism, whose animating principle is the message of Jesus Christ. This organism may experience many changes of external form, as it develops itself in accordance with its inner needs, and with the requirements of its environment. Yet so long as these changes are such as are demanded in order that the vital prin- ciple may be preserved, they are unessential in char- acter. So far indeed are they from being organic alterations, that we ought to reckon them as im- plicitly involved in the very being of the Church. The formation of the hierarchy he regards as :i change of this kind. In fact, since he holds that Jesus Christ mistakenly anticipated the end of the world to be close at hand, and that I lis first disciples lived in expectation of His immediate return in glory, it
