Alistair C. Stewart, Church of England team vicar of Upton-cum-Chalvey, Slough, England, and visiting scholar at Saran College in Salisbury, England, has delivered a deeply researched investigation of the roots of church polity with his long and detailed book, The Original Bishops. His is an impressive argument set to overthrow the view that early Christian communities were governed by a plurality of leaders.
Early on, Stewart defines his terms: the episkopos is primarily the chief economic officer of the local church, who is assisted by the diakonoi, and the term presbyteros, while it held many meanings, is to be carefully distinguished from episkopos.
Stewart argues that for the first two centuries of Christianity local churches were sometimes led by a single episkopos and sometimes by a single presbyteros. He finds that around the turn of the second century, a single episkopos rose above the presbyteros and chose additional presbyteroi from among wealthy patrons of house churches or other community leaders.
His careful research presents both sides of any question. In refuting a long-held consensus regarding collective leadership, Stewart distinguishes the role of oversight as exercised by the first episkopos and the eventual positions of governance that developed late in the second century.
Stewart places the diakonoi near the episkopos as the bishop's assistants in the distribution of charity and, in some places, in the distribution of the Eucharist. He makes a strong case that the episkopos was chosen from among the diakonoi, a historical assertion with theological ramifications today, excepting that Catholic canon law was changed in 2009 to reflect the clear distinction between the priest and the bishop, on the one hand, and the deacon, on the other. The constant and contemporary Catholic description of the deacon is one ordained not to the priesthood, but unto the ministry.
Hence, Stewart's brief comments about women in the ordained diaconate toward the end of the volume can cut both ways. He agrees it is quite likely that the women named by Paul in Philippians and by Ignatius in his greetings to various Christian households were leaders of their communities—episkopoi—but recalling his earlier distinctions between the priestly class and the diakonoi, and arguing against later assumed female episkopoi (e.g., Grapte and Rhoda in Rome), he does not connect them to the developing and by-then developed concept of an episcopacy and dismisses them because of the close association between leadership and patronage in the early church. He concludes, also against claims of women presbyteroi, that women did not exercise leadership roles, at least as they came to be developed and understood, excepting perhaps over their own households.
The discussion of leadership, however, does not affect the discussion of women in the diaconate. Today, in persona Christi capitas reflects priests and bishops, who exercise the power of jurisdiction as well as the power to confect Eucharist, whereas deacons are newly defined as acting in persona Christi servi (previously in nomine ecclesiae). The important historical work in this book helps clarify the distinctions between the priesthood/episcopacy and the diaconate.
The book is by a specialist for specialists and would be a welcome addition to an academic library.
