This post is admittedly long. If you want a shorter version with just the major take-aways, try this version instead.

What does Christ want the structure of the Church to look like? And what did the early Church look like? Broadly speaking, there are two camps:

Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans: Local churches were run by a single bishop, in union with presbyters (elders, later called priests) and deacons. The technical name for this is monoepiscopacy. (which just means “one bishop”).

Non-Anglican Protestants: local churches were run by a group of elders and deacons. There is no distinct office of “bishop,” since “bishop” is just another name for “elder.” We’ll call this system presbyterian.

One of the clearest short defenses of the presbyterian position is from Michael Kruger, a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary (he’s also the seminary’s president). But I think there are a few big problems with Kruger’s argument: first, that he doesn’t tell the full truth about what the evidence he’s citing says; and second, that he strategically leaves out a lot of evidence pointing in the opposite direction.

The Evidence That Wasn’t

Kruger asks, “Was there a single-bishop structure in the first and early second century?” His answer seems to be no. Part of his argument is simply based on the New Testament Greek. He asserts (without explaining why he believes this) that πρεσβυτέρος (“presbyters” or “elders”) and ἐπισκoπος (‘bishop” or “overseer”) are “very similar words.”

But he also doesn’t explain why the New Testament has two distinct terms if they are really, as he claims, “what appears to be the same ruling office.” Instead, much of his exegetical argument is built on silence. For instance, he cites 1 Timothy 3, where St. Paul speaks of the requirements to be a bishop and a deacon, but never mentions elders. That’s true, but in the next two chapters he does give instructions related to elders, saying “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5:17), reminding Timothy not to “neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophetic utterance when the elders laid their hands upon you” (1 Tim. 4:14).

Beyond Scripture, Kruger also points to three first- and second-century sources: the Didache (c. 60’s A.D.), 1 Clement (c. 96 A.D.), and the Shepherd of Hermas (c. 150 A.D.). Here, I think, he plays a little too fast and loose with the evidence. None of the three sources he cites speak of “bishops,” plural, governing a particular local church. They do speak of “bishops” when speaking of the bishops of the Church, but that’s not an argument against the monoepiscopacy. It just means that there are bishops in the global Church, a point that Catholics and Orthodox and Anglicans are only too happy to affirm.

For instance, here’s what 1 Clement says: “So preaching everywhere in country and town, [the Apostles] appointed their firstfruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons unto them that should believe.” So there are bishops and deacons throughout the Church. That doesn’t tell us anything about whether it was one bishop per town, or many. But look at how Kruger presents it in his article: “The letter affirms the testimony of the book of Acts when it tells us that the apostles initially appointed ‘bishops (ἐπισκόπους) and deacons’ in the various churches they visited (42.4).” His paraphrase (adding “in the various churches”) makes it sound like each of the various churches has many bishops. But he’s adding that claim, the very claim he’s supposed to be showing from Patristic evidence. The evidence he’s citing just doesn’t say what he wants (and needs) it to. This is true of the Didache and Shepherd, as well – they just don’t go into the structure of a particular church, so it’s not clear if the “bishops” cited are one per church, or many per church.

This is an important distinction. Imagine someone was trying to prove that Americans were polygamists, and their evidence was to a letter addressed to the “moms and dads of the fourth-grade students.” It wouldn’t even be enough to find someone saying “families are made up of moms and dads and kids.” That doesn’t prove anything of what it’s meant to. Rather, it only shows that there are moms and dads in general, not that one family is made up of multiple moms or multiple dads. To show that, you would need evidence of a particular family that had a plurality of husbands or wives, or at least something a good deal more specific.

It’s a hallmark of a bad theory that the advocates avoid all of the directly relevant texts. In other words, it should set off red flags when you see Baptists trying to defend their position on baptism being merely symbolic, and none of the verses they cite even mention baptism. And it should set off alarms here that Kruger’s defending his position on the structure of the local church without citing any texts mentioning local churches. Interestingly, we do have evidence from c. 107 A.D. that looks at particular local churches, and tells us all about how they were set up. Kruger just omits all of the direct evidence, because it contradicts his whole theory.

The Absent Father

The Church Father who is conspicuously omitted from Kruger’s account is St. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the two known disciples of the Apostle John, who wrote seven letters en route to his martyrdom. One of those letters is to the Christians of Rome, the city where he was about to be martyred; five were to particular local churches; and one was to his friend St. Polycarp, the other disciple of St. John’s.

To the Ephesians, he says: “I received, therefore, your whole multitude in the name of God, through Onesimus, a man of inexpressible love, and your bishop in the flesh, whom I pray you by Jesus Christ to love, and that you would all seek to be like him. And blessed be He who has granted unto you, being worthy, to obtain such an excellent bishop.” Here’s how he describes this church, a church established by St. Paul only a few decades earlier: “it is fitting that you should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also you do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp.” He encourages them in this path, so that “being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, you may in all respects be sanctified.”

Significantly, Ignatius also says to the Ephesians, “Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the [manifested] will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds [of the earth], are so by the will of Jesus Christ.” So notice that the mere use of “bishops” in the plural doesn’t mean that the writers thinks a particular church has many bishops. Ignatius makes it extremely clear that they have only one, Bishop Onesimus.

In his letter to the Magnesians, he refers to “Damas your most worthy bishop,” “your worthy presbyters Bassus and Apollonius,” and “my fellow-servant the deacon Sotio, whose friendship may I ever enjoy, inasmuch as he is subject to the bishop as to the grace of God, and to the presbytery as to the law of Jesus Christ.” He warns them “not to treat your bishop too familiarly on account of his youth, but to yield him all reverence, having respect to the power of God the Father, as I have known even holy presbyters do.”

In his letter to the Trallians, Ignatius refers to “Polybius your bishop” by name, and encourages the church:

For, since you are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, you appear to me to live not after the manner of men, but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, in order, by believing in His death, you may escape from death. It is therefore necessary that, as you indeed do, so without the bishop you should do nothing, but should also be subject to the presbytery, as to the apostle of Jesus Christ, who is our hope, in whom, if we live, we shall [at last] be found.

To the Philadelphians, Ignatius writes that Jesus “is our eternal and enduring joy, especially if [men] are in unity with the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons, who have been appointed according to the mind of Jesus Christ, whom He has established in security, after His own will, and by His Holy Spirit.” He doesn’t name their bishop, but praises him by saying “at whose meekness I am struck with admiration, and who by his silence is able to accomplish more than those who vainly talk. For he is in harmony with the commandments [of God], even as the harp is with its strings.”

Perhaps the strongest words are to the Church of Smyrna, where Ignatius warns them:

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it.[….] It is well to reverence both God and the bishop. He who honours the bishop has been honoured by God; he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop, does [in reality] serve the devil.

He doesn’t mention the local bishop by name here, but that’s because he has an entire other letter addressed to his friend “Polycarp, Bishop of the Church of the Smyrnæans, or rather, who has, as his own bishop, God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

So in each of these five cases, we get a close-up glimpse into the life of a local church, and we get to hear about its structures. And in each of the five cases, it turns out that it’s a monoepiscopacy… and furthermore, that the early Christians seem to believe that this isn’t simply an optional set-up, but rather flows from their obedience to Jesus Christ.

That leaves just one more letter. In his letter to the Romans, Ignatius doesn’t entreat them to obey their bishop. This may be out of deference to the fact that their bishop is the pope, or because the tone of this letter is very different (it’s about his martyrdom, not church life). But even here, Ignatius alludes to the monoepiscopacy, referring to himself as “the bishop of Syria” (rather than “one of the bishops of Syria”) and adds that upon his death, “Jesus Christ alone will oversee it.”

Ignatius actually says a lot more about the role of the bishop and the need to obey him, but I don’t want to belabor the point. You can just read the letters yourself. But it’s worth stressing one point: Ignatius is sometimes mischaracterized by presbyterians as “arguing for” the monoepiscopacy, as if the early churches didn’t have that structure but he thought that they should. But that’s plainly untrue. He’s writing to them to obey the bishops that they already have, not to change their structure of governance. There’s a world of difference between saying “obey the bishop” and “you should have a bishop,” just as there’s a world of difference between “honor thy father and mother” and “you should have a father and mother.”

John Calvin once wrote thate once “Nothing can be more nauseating, than the absurdities which have been published under the name of Ignatius.” It’s all but an admission that if Ignatius is right about the Church, then the Reformers are wrong. But Calvin’s forgery assertion is now almost universally rejected, even by presbyterian scholars (for reasons I explain in much more boring detail here; otherwise, suffice it to say that Ignatius’ letters are mentioned and corroborated in other ancient texts).

So how does Kruger handle St. Ignatius? See for yourself:

Now it needs to be noted from the outset that by the end of the second century, most churches were ruled by a single bishop. For whatever set of reasons, monepiscopacy had won the day. Many scholars attribute this development to Ignatius (pictured above). [….] What led to this transition? Most scholars argue that it was the heretical battles fought by the church in the second century that led them to turn to key leaders to defend and represent the church.

So Kruger clearly knows who Ignatius is, and that he’s an important figure in this debate, but he never bothers to quote (or respond to) a single one of Ignatius’ descriptions of the early Church. Indeed, anyone unfamiliar with St. Ignatius and his writings would be forgiven for believing that he wrote at “the end of the second century” based on the misleading way Kruger refers to him. But that’s not true. Ignatius wrote about 107 A.D., almost half a century before the Shepherd of Hermas, and barely after the death of the last Apostle. At the time of his writing, as we’ve seen, the monoepiscopacy was firmly in place. So how could it be the result of “the heretical battles fought by the church in the second century”? That would be like blaming the 1969 moon landing on the War on Terror. It’s nonsensical backwards history.

The True Story of Clement and Hermas

Does the case for the monoepiscopacy just turn on Ignatius, then? Not at all. While the authorship of the Didache is lost to history, we do know who wrote 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas. And it turns out, what we know about them from second-century sources totally refutes Kruger’s citation to them as support… and shows how both men are better cited as proof of the monoepiscopacy.

The Muratorian Fragment, an ancient text dating to about 180 A.D. (even according to Kruger himself) mentions that “Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair of the church of the city of Rome.” This is actually how Kruger knows that the Shepherd of Hermas was written c. 150 – because Hermas wrote it while his brother, Pope Pius I, was pope, and that was from 140-155. There’s no reason to doubt the Muratorian Fragment on this point, either. First, the author isn’t trying to prove the monoepiscopacy. Like Ignatius, he just assumes it, and uses the papacy of Pius to give a time period for when the Shepherd of Hermas was written (the way we might date something to “the Reagan era” or “the Pope Benedict years” today). Second, he’s not describing legendary events in the distant past. He’s recounting what seem to be basic, well-known facts about events that are, by his own telling, very recent. So the allegedly anti-monoepiscopal Hermas was actually the brother of the pope.

But that’s nothing compared to St. Clement. Kruger says of 1 Clement, “This letter is attributed to a ‘Clement’—whose identity remains uncertain—who represents the church in Rome and writes to the church at Corinth to deal with the fallout of a recent turnover in leadership.” But we actually know a good deal more about the Clement representing Rome in the year 96. About the same time that the Muratorian fragment is being written, St. Irenaeus of Lyons writes Against Heresies, in which he traces every pope from the time of the Apostles to the present:

The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome dispatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles, proclaiming the one God, omnipotent, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of man, who brought on the deluge, and called Abraham, who led the people from the land of Egypt, spoke with Moses, set forth the law, sent the prophets, and who has prepared fire for the devil and his angels. From this document, whosoever chooses to do so, may learn that He, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was preached by the Churches, and may also understand the apostolic tradition of the Church, since this Epistle is of older date than these men who are now propagating falsehood, and who conjure into existence another god beyond the Creator and the Maker of all existing things. To this Clement there succeeded Evaristus.

In other words, the author of 1 Clement was Pope Clement I, who reigned from c. 88-98. And we have external confirmation of this by 180 A.D., still well before the close of the second century.

What About Jerome?

Kruger does have one bit of evidence supporting his argument. St. Jerome (347-420) does argue, “The presbyter is the same as the bishop, and before parties had been raised up in religion by the provocations of Satan, the churches were governed by the Senate of the presbyters.” But there’s three things you should know. First, Jerome is writing two hundred years or more after everyone else we’ve looked at. Second, while he was a great translator and theologian, he wasn’t a historian. And finally, his peculiar views on this matter seems to have been formed in opposition to an extreme view on the opposite side of the question. The Protestant historian Philip Schaff explained that in his Letter 146, “Jerome refutes the opinion of those who make deacons equal to presbyters, but in doing so himself makes presbyters equal to bishops.”

In the ancient church, deacons were highly regarded as the representatives of the bishop. While of a lower order in the church than presbyters, deacons carried with them the authority of the bishop, since they worked directly for him. (If it helps, consider the imperfect corporate analogy of a manager butting heads with the secretary of a powerful executive. On paper, the manager outranks the secretary, but the secretary has a lot of the de facto authority of the executive behind her.) In both Scripture (cf. 1 Tim. 3) and early Church writings, we see bishops and deacons paired up, even when the authors clearly believe in a distinct presbytery. Even Ignatius (who, as we’ve seen, very clearly distinguishes between bishops, presbyters, and deacons, in that order) includes a chapter for bishops and a chapter for deacons in his letter to the Trallians, while only mentioning the presbyters in passing. As Schaff explains, by Jerome’s day there were those arguing that deacons were equal in authority to presbyters. In his response, he simply overargues, going to the opposite extreme. If you’ve ever disagreed with someone so strongly that you found yourself taking a more radical position against them than you otherwise might have, maybe you know what this is like.

How do we know he’s overargued? In part, because this claim seems to contradict his own writings elsewhere. In De Viris Illustribus (On Illustrious Men), Jerome claims the opposite of what he claims in Letter 146. For instance:

Simon Peter the son of John, from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, brother of Andrew the apostle, and himself chief of the apostles, after having been bishop of the church of Antioch and having preached to the Dispersion — the believers in circumcision, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia — pushed on to Rome in the second year of Claudius to overthrow Simon Magus, and held the sacerdotal chair there for twenty-five years until the last, that is the fourteenth, year of Nero.

In this same letter, he refers to St. Ignatius as the “third bishop of the church of Antioch after Peter the apostle,” and St. Clement as either the second or fourth bishop of Rome, and tells how St. Polycarp “went to Rome in the time of the emperor Antoninus Pius while Anicetus ruled the church in that city.” (Anicetus was pope from c. 157 – 168). In other words, Jerome specifically documents how the episcopacy was present from the earliest days, dating back directly to the Apostles.

But whichever of Jerome’s arguments you’re more inclined to, it’s nevertheless true that Jerome isn’t remembered as an historian. In contrast, Eusebius (263-339) , who died before Jerome’s birth, was the world’s first Church historian. From his record-keeping, we know the names (and sometimes biographies) of each of the earliest bishops of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. You’re free to reject his evidence as too late to be reliable, but in that case, why trust Jerome’s claims a generation or so later? Particularly when, as in this case, Jerome’s claims are contradicted by the superior evidence – the testimony of the earliest Christians about their own church structure – and by his own statements elsewhere.

The Implausibility of the Presbyterian Claim

Let’s say that you’re firmly convinced that Kruger is right about the Didache, 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas. What would you have to believe in order to believe this? Well, you’d still have to account for Ignatius, who clearly believes in a monoepiscopacy in 107. How did the most famous disciple of the last living Apostle get things so wrong, so quickly? Even if you thoroughly discredited Ignatius, what do you do with his audience? That is, you’ve still got to account for all of those churches he’s writing to. How did the Ephesians go from being a church built up by St. Paul to one that has Bishop Onesimus? How did the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia, who we find being encouraged by Jesus Christ in c. 90 A.D. (Rev. 2:8-11, Rev. 3:7-13) each happen to fall under the sway of monoepiscopacy before 107? And it’s not enough to discredit Ignatius and these churches, you’ll have to discredit St. Polycarp as well, since he’s the bishop of Smyrna. So apparently, neither of the Apostle John’s two known disciples can be trusted, nor can the churches praised by Jesus Christ.

But your troubles have only just begun. By Kruger’s telling, the Shepherd of Hermas “provides another confirmation of this governance structure in the second century.” (Even though he says “another,” this is the only piece of evidence he proffers for the church being presbyteral in the second century). And just what does Hermas say? He speaks of the “office of bishop and teacher and deacon,” but since he says “teacher” instead of “presbyter,” he must actually think that there are only two orders, presbyter and deacon.

Let’s say you find that persuasive. What do you do with Irenaeus of Lyons (who traces every Bishop of Rome, including St. Clement, from the time of Peter down to 180 A.D.) or the Muratorian fragment, which says that Hermas was the brother of Pope Pius I? Maybe you’re ready to believe that, like Ignatius, these guys are a bunch of liars. But how on earth do they plan to get away with lying about events that, as the Fragment says, happened “very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome”?

Recall Kruger’s theory about how monoepiscopacy came about:

Now it needs to be noted from the outset that by the end of the second century, most churches were ruled by a single bishop. For whatever set of reasons, monepiscopacy had won the day. Many scholars attribute this development to Ignatius (pictured above). [….] What led to this transition? Most scholars argue that it was the heretical battles fought by the church in the second century that led them to turn to key leaders to defend and represent the church.

This is basically the plot of the third Star Wars prequel, but with bigger continuity errors. In that film, the Republic, faced with a fake threat, dissolves itself in favor of one Senator, Palpatine, who becomes Emperor. In Kruger’s version of Church history, the Church, faced with the “threats” of Gnosticism, Marcionitism, and Ebionitism, dissolves the structure it was given by the Apostles, in favor of one presbyter, who becomes bishop. But this doesn’t just happen once, it happens in every single local church. And not just in the Roman Empire, either – somehow the local churches all over the world, from Ethiopia to India, also get in on this trend. I alluded to the “continuity error” of this theory – Kruger blames the now long-dead Ignatius for this.

There are a few other problems with this theory. The first is that there is absolutely no evidence anywhere of this transition happening. Nobody talks about how in X year, or under Y circumstances, or in response to Z heresy, the church of such-and-such decided to go from “presbyterian” to monoepiscopal governance. It never happens. Nobody complains about this alleged switch, nobody praises it, nobody notices it at all, or even mentions it in passing. That’s… pretty weird, particularly when you remember (as 1 Clement shows!) that the Church at the time viewed her structure as God-given. In the words of Fr. Michael C. McGuckian,

The notion of a church choosing its church order is unheard of in Christian tradition until the sixteenth century with the Reformation in Switzerland, and the choice between presbyteral and episcopal government is church-dividing to this day. Is it plausible to suggest that it would not have been equally divisive in the first decades of the Church’s life, and could have taken place without leaving any trace whatever?

It’s not just that there’s no evidence of any of these presbyteral churches existing, or any evidence of a church becoming monoepiscopal sometime in the second century. It’s that there’s a whole lot of evidence pointing to the exact opposite conclusion: viz., that they were always monoepiscopal, because they were created that way by the Apostles themselves. If you’re going to accept Kruger’s theory, what do you do with all of the records and lists that every major church has, tracing every bishop from its founding down to the present? Do we conclude that the Christians of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome are all erasing and rewriting their own history? And what about all of the other Christian writers (like the chronicler Hegesippus) who also provide these genealogies of bishops? Just how deep does this conspiracy go?

Remember that the Church is “the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:19-20). What does it say of Christ and the Apostles if the structure that they built was universally dismantled within a century or two (without a peep, or a note of opposition!), and then not restored for another fourteen?

There’s one final problem. I’ve only discussed the tip of the iceberg in terms of holy second-century bishops. There are tons of bishops you would have to explain away. As one writer put it:

When we examine bishops from the second century we find a litany that fit nicely within the orthodox camp: Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, Papias, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Theophilus of Antioch, Anecitus of Rome, Polycrates of Ephesus, Victor of Rome, Demetrius of Alexandria, Melito of Sardis, Theophilus of Caesarea, and Dionysius of Corinth.

You’re not going to believe who that writer was. Apparently, Kruger is well aware that the early Church was monoepiscopal (and that Clement was Bishop of Rome) when it suits his purposes, and he’s even aware of just how many bishops we have records of from this time period. So what do we make of all of these orthodox bishops?

A Better Alternative

Let me conclude by offering a more plausible theory for all of the evidence: Christ, through the Apostles, established a three-tiered Church consisting of bishops, presbyters (later called priests) and deacons, fulfilling the three-tiered Old Testament division of high priest, priest, and Levite. The monoepiscopacy didn’t “develop,” and there was no “switch,” because this was always the case. Christian writers simply got more precise in how they spoke about the offices over time.

While (and where) the Apostles were active, their very presence made this structure hard to observe, but wherever we see a Christian church close up, or hear details about any local church, this is consistent with what we find. That’s it. It’s a simple theory, but one that virtually every Church Father (save Jerome) subscribes to, and which neatly accounts for all of the evidence, without convoluted grammatical arguments about the Greek, or descending into bad-faith accusations against St. Ignatius, St. Irenaeus, and the rest, or assuming that you know more about the first- and second-century Church than do first- and second-century Christians. So given this, why in the world do so many presbyterian Protestants still act as if Church history is on their side on this issue?