Hi all in Jesus Christ,Here is some dialogue I was engaged in recently:
First, let's just look back to the Old Testament to the culture from which the first Christians emerged. The apostles did not suggest that eldership was anything new but assumed a continuation of an ancient institution. OT elders were everywhere yet none is ever said to have been appointed or ordained or elected to be an elder! That is most significant. Continuation rather than introduction is what I am contending for. The fact that Christ nor the apostles did not introduce a new kind of eldership clearly indicates continuation.
Their "official" role was head of family, patriarch, mentor, judge, counselor, people's rep, and general community leader. Age was a gift of God. "Honor your father and mother and YOUR days will be long."
>The Gospels and the book of Acts refer to the elders, or presbuteros, of the
>people in contexts which seem to indicate a specific subset of leaders, and
>not merely all the older men of Israel.
Exactly, they were a distinguished group of older ones - certainly not every older man in the town else the divine historians would have recorded: "every single elder in the town." They didn't.
>Imo, older men would have been considered 'presuteros' in a generial sense,
>but there seems to have been a specific sense in which 'presbuteros' was
>used in an official sense.
>
>If 'presbuteros' meant _only_ old men, and didn't have any official
>connotation to it, then why would the apostles have appointed elders in the
>churches. The elders would have already have been clearly recognizable as
>'older men' by looking at them. I think the term 'elders of the church'
>refers to 'official' elders, just as the 'elders of the people' in the
>Gospels refers to certain government officials. (I suspect we are in
>agreement on this issue for the most part, but I feel the issue is worth
>elaborating on.)
>
>If presbuteros' can have an 'official' sense, then the question is whether
>or not the literal meaning of 'older one' is still attached to the word.
>Some in the so-called 'IC' see the word as having an official sense only,
>and do not attach much signifigance to the literal meaning of the word. I
>think the Bible indicates that elders were older men physically. After
>addressing the elders, Peter tells the younger to submit to the elders, as
>you pointed out. Paul tells Timothy how to treat the elders/older men, and
>then tells him how to treat older women and yougner women. Later in that
>chapter, he talks about the elders that rule well-- with the same word for
>'elders.'
Yes, when Christian older ones are serving as pastors, that is certainly "official" business and they, just like their OT counterparts, could be considered as "officials." Ambassadors, servants of the King, etc. Official indeed.
>> The "novice" thing has been perceived and translated as a "recent
>> convert" but this isn't accurate, according to some. Literally, it means
>> "not a young plant." A simple metaphor to mean "not immature." Deissmann
>> of Germany, who translated a large number of the earliest Greek papyri,
>> confirms it.
>Do you think this word may indicate that elders should be older men,
>physically? Not 'whiper-snappers'?
What it means is that we have a requirement made of every older Christian - not a condition to become an "officer." These are imperitive statements. The requirement is to be mature - a deep rooted tree, not shallow rooted and shallow minded. A similar exhortation would be to "be grave." Is this maturity and the other requirements beyond the reach of any Spirit-indwelled believer? I say not.
>> Jesus, btw, is a pastor (Good Shepherd) but not an elder. He died young.
>> A no-brainer, huh?
>
>Not according to Ireneaus' contraversial minority view. 
Which was???
>> Well, if the word elder has been so transformed that it now applies to
>> younger ones, when did that magnanimous change occur? In other words,
>> when we come to New Testament elders - why should we differentiate them
>> from Old Testament elders???
>I stumbled across an Orthodox web page telling about some cannons from the 2
>or 300's. One point was that an 'elder' could not be under 30. If I
>remember correctly, a footnote said that the Romans changed this to 25
>without going through proper channels (a church council perhaps.) The
>Christians who wrote these church cannons within the first few hundred years
>of the apostles, who presumably spoke Greek, thought of 'presbuteros' in an
>official sense, without paying much attention to it's original literal
>meaning. I think it is likely that the word had an 'official' meaning in
>the first century, but that the literal meaning which referred to age
>gradually became less and less important.
Gradually is right. Words, like churches, sure change, no doubt. The Orthodox church itself scarcely reflects the original, imo. They have restricted just about everything that can be restricted, why should pastoring be the exception. Surely, much changed in the first few generations after the death of last apostle. I'm interested in Biblical usage, myself. Elder is the comparative form of old. Thus, a 25 year old would be an elder if in a room full of younger ones. Ordinarily, elderness is in relationship to the entire Christian community, so the elders would be the bearded ones. The fathers and grandfathers. Even the great-grandfathers, as no birth control, early teen marriages, and "lights out early" were the norm. One man, hardly 50, could have a whole house full of people looking up to him as their patriarch, guide, and friend. Why would, how could he not desire to shepherd those who were just a part of him wrapped up in a different skin? Could you imagine him being told: "You need to leave the great "gift of pastoring" to others until you get those ordination papers. Teaching, being mature, monogamous, sober... you don't have to worry about any of that. That's only for the pros."
Me, I have two young sons, 10 and 12. I am intentionally raising them and training them to be pastors which is what all Christian older ones are to be.
Jesus, referring to the jealous elder brother of the prodigal won, used the exact term as those who were appointed to shepherd and to those referred to as elders of the people. That comparison alone should make some lights start coming on. :-)
>I'd like to comment on the verse from kings,
>
>1 Kgs. 12:8 But he (Rehoboam) forsook the counsel of the old men, which
>they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up
>with him, and which stood before him:
>
>If I remember correctly, the word for 'elders' here is not the standard
>'bearded ones' word ('zaqin' is it?) used to refer to the 70 elders of
>Israel-- the word which seems to correspond with NT 'presbuteros.' But
>there is till a relevant principle in the passage, imo.
It IS the standard word for sure, zahkehn, used for the elders of Israel and elders of the people. Whether it has a personal or "official" connotation is easily (?) determined by the context of each occurrence.
>
>Link Hudson
>Marion, NC, USA
Scholars are divided, of course. Look what is at stake, though. In his Acts commentary, FF Bruce explains in a footnote that the "elder brothers" is a more accurate rendering of the attendees at the Jerusalem Counsel. I also have a quote from Bruce in which he concedes that the early church did not have officials. Now where did I see that?
A keen English scholar, AE Harvey, who has co-authored a Study Bible wrote:
It must be admitted at the outset that the use of the word presbuteros or elder to denote the holder of an office is foreign to normal Greek usage. Outside Jewish and Christian literature, the word presbutero" has only one possible meaning: 'older men'. It is true that presbuteroi appear on many Greek inscriptions of the Hellenistic period; but on closer examination it turns out that all these inscriptions refer to the various associations of older men which grew up as a kind of complement to the athletic associations of the young, and it is not until the middle of the second century A.D. that there is any evidence for presbutero" as a title for a member of the newly created gerousia of Hellenistic cities - and even then the epigraphic evidence amounts to no more than one certain and two possible instances. It therefore seems necessary to assume that in the Greek-speaking world the word presbutero" meant, not an official of any kind, but simply an older man...
The point I am making is simply that one of the principles which seems to have played its part in the development of church order was the 'principle of seniority.' Elders were so called because they were originally the older and senior members of the congregation, and the respect to which they were entitled did not differ essentially from that shown to any 'older man'....
We have not a scrap of evidence from the early period that the Christian elders were ever organized into anything formal or official, or that they were ever sitting in committee in such a way that would need a chairman.
The word used here (Tit. 1:5-7) for 'appoint' kaqisthmi, is the same as that used by Clement when he talks of appointing first-fruits. But, as we saw, Clement does not mean that certain people were appointed 'first-fruits': this would make no sense, since either you were a first convert or you were not. What he means is that at that time apostles appointed their first converts... Similarly, in Acts 14:23, Paul an Barnabas 'chose elders in each church'. The verb here is ceirotoneivn, which is often translated 'appoint'. But this meaning is unattested; there is no other instance in the N.T. or contemporary literature of the word losing its proper meaning of election or selection, and the sense is at least as good if we keep the meaning 'choose' and assume that what the apostles are doing is choosing from among the existing elders of the churches those who are to bear special responsibility - just as, in Acts 20 Paul calls together the 'elders' of Miletus, whom the Holy Spirit has made (eqeto) episkopoi . In all these cases there need be no question to appointing people to be elders: ELDERS EXIST ALREADY. (Emphasis mine. - DA)
A. E. Harvey, Elders in The Journal of Theological Studies XXV:2 Oxford University, (October 1974) pp. 319, 320, 326, 329, 330, 331.
Another scholar and former Pres of Westminster Seminary made this candid admission about 1 Tim 5:17, the main passage from which Reformed Church government is derived:
To begin with, it is not clear that the word in 1 Timothy 5:17 is used of office rather than of age. In the whole intervening passage, Paul is discussing the place and responsibilities of older and younger men and women in the church. It is possible that the older widows who are enrolled (v. 9) and assisted (v. 16) by the church function as deaconesses; at least they are recognized by the church for ministry in the light of a history of good works and benevolence.
In this setting it is most natural to interpret 1 Timothy 5:17 in this way: "We have been considering the older women who are widows, their service and support. Now let us return to the older men who are not to be treated without respect (v. 1) but are to be honored. Those who rule - and, of course, who rule well - are to be counted worthy of double honor."
Edmund P. Clowney, A Brief for Church Governors. from Order in the Offices, Essays Defining the Roles of Church Officers edited by Mark Brown. Classic Presbyterian Government Resources. 1993. p 61.
As Mike pointed out, the appoint and ordain words cover a lot of territory. I'll take his word for it. But let us look at ordination with respect to NT elders in the English. Let us move from the plain usages to the disputed ones targeting elder appointment or ordination. With my limitations, that's about all I can do.
In Acts 20, elders were commanded to feed the flock. Surely that is an appointment. Elders were appointed to the task - not to an office. In 1 Peter, again, elders were commanded to be shepherds. That is also a clear appointment to a particular function. Ergo, when the apostles appointed elders in every city, it seems most natural that they were appointing them to the very task upon which all involved mutually agreed, instead of appointing them to an office of elder. Particularly when the phrase "office of elder" is conspicuously absent from the Bible.
It is noteworthy that the apostles did the appointing and that after the churches already were in existence. He did not command that churches appoint or elect them. Some translators have even tried to read "a show of hands" into the process, making it a public election.
Office of elder is as unnatural as an office of younger, imo. For the sake of argument, let's say the NT elders were real officials in the modern ecclesiastical sense. What function could they perform or what requirement is made of them that any other "unofficial" elder could not undertake to perform (or attain) to the good of the church and glory of God? Underneath so many of these discussions I detect that that some are determined to restrict pastoring, just as the Lord's Supper, preaching, and ministering have been traditionally restricted to a select few.
Furthermore, in the patriarchal NT context, why is there practically nothing addressed to the "unofficial" elders? Strange omission, indeed.
To my knowledge, there is but one modern technical work on the eldership in the English language. Oh, I know there are some other eldership books out there but they are not like this one. An entire book on who NT elders were. I'll quote from it later. Its title is also a summary of the thesis. "R. Alastair Campbell. 1994. The Elders: Seniority within Earliest Christianity. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. It challenges the view that the elders were holders of a definite office derived from a similar office in the synagogue, demonstrating that "elder" was a title of honor, not office. $49.95. Naturally, the person I lent it to has not returned it. Where is my other copy?Lastly, I mention Robert Banks, formerly of Fuller Seminary, who wrote a scholarly book on house churches, Paul's Idea of Community. He is not emphatic about the position that I bring but he does allow for it. Page 147: In secular Greek, presbuteros simply meant older man. Just possibly, Luke understood it in that way in Acts. If he did, then Paul appointed some 'elders' to a particular responsibility, not some people to the position of elder. End quote.
I hope to live to see this important matter removed from the list of disputed questions. The implications to church planting, ministry, and life are many.
blessings to all as you prayerfully consider,
David Anderson
Bristol, TN
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