Why the Case for Episcopal Government Doesn’t Persuade
Michael Bird provided an outline of the biblical and historical case for episcopacy, wherein “church governance centres on the bishop as the fulcrum of faith, order, and ministry…The diocese is the basic unit with a single bishop overseeing a number of priests and parishes. The bishop is distinct from and above the priests and deacons, who serve in an individual congregation.”
For this presbyterian, the strength of Bird’s position came down to two key arguments. First, that ἐπίσκοπος (episkopos, “bishop/overseer”) and πρεσβύτερος (presbuteros, “elder”) are not synonyms, but perionyms, meaning that their meanings overlap rather than being interchangeable. Citing the work of Alistair Stewart, Bird suggests, “that early congregations had a single episkopos, but when the many episkopoi of a city met together, they became a federated council of presbyteroi (emphasis original).” Second, that the apostles functioned as a college of bishops from which the episcopate is modeled and derives its legitimacy. There was originally a cohort of apostles leading the church in Jerusalem, then just Peter, James, and John, and finally, just James. “The Jerusalem church evolved from an authority consisting of apostles with elders and deacons, to a monoepiscopacy with the bishop acting as first among equals among the elders.”
So, the crux of the argument that precludes presbyterianism is that, a) ἐπίσκοπος and πρεσβύτερος are perionyms, and b) we see monoepiscopacy in scripture with James in Jerusalem, which illustrates the overlapping, and yet distinct, nature of bishops and elders.
I was left unpersuaded. This argument is begging the question. I acknowledge that Bird was providing a sketch of the alleged biblical and historical basis for episcopacy, and that some of the points he mentioned might not be his own position. In the same spirit, this is a sketch of why the biblical and historical argument for episcopacy is rejected by presbyterians…
Ross Douthat and Tough-Guy Calvinists
From Ross Douthat, in The New York Times,
The rhetoric of anti-Catholicism, whether its sources are Protestant or secular, has always insisted that the church of Rome is the enemy of what you might call healthy sexuality. This rhetorical trope has persisted despite radical redefinitions of what healthy sexuality means; one sexual culture overthrows another, but Catholicism remains eternally condemned…But at the same time, the way the “healthy sexuality” supposedly available outside the church seems to change with every generation offers a reason to be skeptical that all Catholic ills would vanish if Rome only ceased making “unnatural” demands like celibacy and chastity.
The difference between the secularists of today who believe that priests need to be sexually liberated, and the Protestants of the past (and present), is that the Reformed believe Rome insisting on clerical celibacy goes beyond scripture and even violates it. This twists the gospel by concluding that celibacy is necessary for a better spiritual life…
On Jephthah and Biblical Translation
A friend passed along this insightful review by Hillel Halkin of Robert Alter’s one-man literary translation of the Old Testament. A great portion of the review uses Alter’s translation of the Jephthah account in Judges 11 as an example of the difficulty in translating ancient Hebrew well. Jephthah’s exclamation when his daughter comes through his front door can have a range of emphases depending on the way Hebrew worked colloquially:
In the Hebrew, Jephthah’s exclamation is, “Aha, biti! Hakhre’a hikhra’tini, v’at hayit b’okhrai.” This is difficult. If one were to try to translate it literally, one would arrive at something like, “Ah, my daughter! To bring to knee have you brought me to my knees, and you have been one of my troublers”…
How should this be translated?
As Alter does [“Alas, my daughter, you have indeed laid me low and you have joined ranks with my troublers”]?
As: “Ah, my daughter, you surely have undone me. You have done what no enemy could do”?
As: “Damn it all, child! You’ve tripped me up, you have, and trouble is all you are”?
Without knowing whether this is formal or casual Hebrew it is impossible to say for certain how Jephthah’s statement should be translated. Halkin states, “Much of the Bible is like this. Its translators work in a closed circle. To understand the nuance of a line, they must understand the passage in which it occurs, but they often cannot understand the passage without understanding each line’s nuance. Before objecting that ‘Damn it all, child!’ can’t possibly be the tone in which Jephthah is speaking, we need to consider the monstrously self-centered person he can be viewed as being…
On the Incarnation of the Word and the End of the Oracles
Alan Jacobs posted a summary of Plutarch’s 2nd century essay on the cessation of the oracles.
It was widely recognized in Plutarch’s time (late first and early second century A.D.) that the great oracles of the ancient world — the most famous of them being the one at Delphi, of course — had largely ceased to provide useful guidance or had fallen silent altogether. Some of the once famous shrines had been abandoned and had fallen into ruin. But no one understood why this had happened. Plutarch’s “essay” is a fictional dialogue — narrated by one Lamprias, who also takes the leading role in the conversation and may well be Plutarch’s mouthpiece — in which a group of philosophically-inclined men debate the possible reasons for the oracles’ failure.
Jacobs goes on the describe the various reasons that Plutarch through Lamprias rejects and accepts for this silence, which he concludes is a result of shifting natural phenomena. I happened to read Jacobs’ post at the same time I was reading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation of the Word. Writing in the 4th century, Athanasius addresses this subject as well, but from a much different perspective. Athanasius argues that the incarnation of Christ profoundly altered the world. His incarnation brought the divine into the created, and broke the power of spiritual blindness upon the world. Jesus as the conquering word is not only defeating spiritual evil in the present and future, but has defeated it already by his arrival…
Infanticide and Guilt By Association
One week ago (January 23rd, 2019) the government of the state of New York enacted a bill legalizing abortion all the way up to delivery and legalized leaving infants to die who survive a botched abortion. The One World Trade Center was lit up in pink to celebrate this legislation, with the morbid irony that it has a monument to all the unborn children killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Yesterday a Democratic delegate to the Virginia State Assembly defended a bill she submitted to the assembly that would allow abortion up until the moment of delivery, even if the baby is full-term and the mother is dilated…
