Episcopal polity

Episcopal polity is a form of church government in which bishops, an office set above ordinary elders (presbyters), govern a group of local congregations and are commonly regarded as standing in succession from the apostles.¹ Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism all govern this way, though they differ over how far a bishop’s authority extends beyond his own diocese.² It differs from presbyterian government, exercised through graded assemblies of elders, and from congregational government, exercised by the local church itself, the form the 1689 confession holds.³

Historical Origin

The earliest post-apostolic churches were governed by a plurality of interchangeable elders and overseers, an arrangement Herman Bavinck calls “aristocratic-presbyterial”; within little more than a century this had given way, first in the East and then in the West, to a “monarchical-episcopal” arrangement.⁴ Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early second century, supplies the first clear evidence of the change, naming overseer, presbyters, and deacons as three distinct kinds of office repeatedly, as much as thirteen times.⁵ Bavinck cautions that “the episcopal idea is still at the beginning of its development” in Ignatius’s letters: his bishop is “a man sent from Christ… a likeness of God or Christ” with whom unity matters against heresy and schism, but he is “not the bearer of the tradition, nor a New Testament priest, nor an apostolic successor”; he remains “surrounded by the council of presbyters and deacons” and holds “no authority outside that local church,” even as Ignatius “elevates him far above them in status” and “demands almost unlimited obedience to him.”⁶

Revelation’s address of each of the seven churches of Asia to a single “angel” (Rev. 1:20-3:22) supplied later readers with a textual root for the office: the angel is pictured “in such a prominent role that he could be described as a messenger… and regarded as the representative of the whole congregation,” a reading Bavinck judges likely stands behind the monarchical episcopate’s rise.⁷ As congregations multiplied within a city or region, the bishop associated with the founding congregation acquired priority over the others and became the sole minister authorized to celebrate the Eucharist, ordain, and pronounce absolution.⁸ In Rome this development advanced furthest into the papacy;⁹ in the East, Eastern Orthodoxy and other churches continued to govern through bishops without ever accepting a single bishop’s universal jurisdiction over the whole church.¹⁰

Core Tenets

Arguments for episcopal government have drawn on both history and scriptural pattern. Edward Leigh’s seventeenth-century summary of the case runs from proportion: “the high Priest was set over the other Priests, and over the Levites… The twelve Apostles were more eminent then the seventy Disciples,” and “it is the constant Doctrine of all the Fathers, that the Bishops succeeded the Apostles in the ordinary Government of the Church, as also the Presbyters succeeded the Seventy Disciples.”¹¹ Bishop Davenant pressed the same logic onto the New Testament text itself: the apostles were “equal in degree and power,” yet “the chief Pastours were appointed by the Apostles in the Church of Ephesus and Crete, which had power of jurisdiction over the Presbyters of those Churches,” Timothy at Ephesus and Titus at Crete already exercising an authority above ordinary presbyters.¹² A third argument turned on longevity: “The Christian world saw no other Government for fourteen hundred years after Christ,” and “Episcopacy was either planted by the Apostles or their immediate Successors in the first and best ages of the Church.”¹³

A further argument was drawn from James’s role at the Jerusalem council. “In the early centuries of Christianity, it was commonly thought that James was the bishop of Jerusalem and the elders were his clergy,” pointing to his prominence as the leading voice at the council (Acts 15) and in the Jerusalem church’s later dealings with Paul (Acts 21).¹⁴ Revelation’s single “angel” per congregation was read the same way, as a single ruling minister standing for his church.⁷

Comparison with the Reformed Confessions

The 1689 confession and the Westminster Confession both decline to recognize bishops as a governing order set above ordinary elders, though they differ from each other on where governing authority instead rests. The 1689 confession holds that a particular church’s officers, “bishops or elders, and deacons,” are “chosen… by the common suffrage of the church itself,” with no outside body holding binding authority over it.¹⁵ The Westminster Confession instead vests real, though fallible, authority in synods of presbyters gathered from multiple congregations, never in an individual bishop.¹⁶ Bavinck states the wider Reformed case against the office itself: “The New Testament does not know of any official distinction between overseer (episkopos) and elder (presbyteros); it does not recognize a special institution of the episcopate alongside the presbyterate… There is no hierarchy in the church of Christ.”¹⁷ The Reformers, on his account, followed patristic voices who already read the terms as interchangeable, among them Jerome, whose own explanation for the office’s rise Edward Leigh preserves: “The order of Bishops came in by meer custome of the Church, to avoid Schisms which arose for want of Heads.”¹⁸ Respondents in the same disputation answered the proportion argument by distinguishing kinds of office rather than degrees within one: the apostles’ superiority to the seventy, they held, concerned “Officers of different kinds,” the way presbyters and deacons differ, not a precedent for ranking one presbyter above another.¹⁹

Strauch answers the James and Peter arguments directly from the same texts that raise them. Of Peter he writes that “the Gospels give Peter no special, exclusive title to differentiate him from the other apostles. He was not the presiding bishop of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15:6-29), nor the senior apostle… He was subject to his fellow apostles as a group.”²⁰ Of James: “These ideas have no basis in Scripture, however. Acts 15 reveals that ‘the apostles and elders’ met together as a council,” not James alone presiding as a bishop over subordinate clergy.²¹ On the angel of Revelation 1:20, Bavinck adds a qualifying note from his own exposition of the doctrine of creation: the term more plausibly names the “angels” of the seven churches as “their ministers, the representatives of the churches,” rather than settling whether one minister or several stood at each church’s head.²²

Variants

Episcopal government is not one uniform claim. Bavinck distinguishes Rome’s own development, where the episcopacy grew “into a papal system, with the bishop of Rome having preeminent authority” over the whole church, from Eastern Orthodoxy and “many other Eastern churches and sects,” which are likewise “organized” through bishops but without ever accepting that single universal jurisdiction.²³ Theodore Beza, writing amid the same disputation Leigh records, distinguished three senses of the office itself: an “Episcopus Divinus” (the bishop of Scripture, one and the same as a presbyter), an “Episcopus Humanus” (a bishop chosen by his fellow presbyters to preside among them and govern by fixed law), and an “Episcopus Diabolicus” (a bishop claiming sole power of ordination and jurisdiction, “lording it over Gods Heritage”).²⁴

Related Doctrines

References

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “The episcopal system of church government with the bishop as the legitimate successor of the apostles and the spiritual ruler of the believers now functioned as the manner and means of church governance.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “The Reformers categorically rejected the papal system, particularly the notion of apostolic succession, and separate themselves from the Greek Orthodox and Anglicans as well as Roman Catholics.” ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 9. ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “The organization described in the preceding paragraph, an organization that can be called aristocratic-presbyterial, soon developed into a monarchical-episcopal arrangement. This started early in the East; the West soon followed suit.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “Ignatius provides incontrovertible evidence for this when he speaks repeatedly, as much as thirteen times, of overseers (episcopoi), presbyters, and deacons as three distinct kinds of office-bearers.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “the episcopal idea is still at the beginning of its development [in Ignatius’s letters]. The episcopus is a man sent from Christ, a gift of God, a likeness of God or Christ… But he is not the bearer of the tradition, nor a New Testament priest, nor an apostolic successor; he is always surrounded by the council of presbyters and deacons, as Christ was by his apostles. He is an office-bearer in a local church and has no authority outside that local church. Ignatius still consistently connects this episcopus to the presbyters and deacons, but he also elevates him far above them in status; he regularly compares him with God or with Christ and demands almost unlimited obedience to him from church members.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “Rev. 1:20-3:22 is important because it describes the bishop in such a prominent role that he could be described as a messenger (angelos)… and regarded as the representative of the whole congregation. It is likely that the development of the monarchical episcopate has its roots there.” ↩ ↩²
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “in communities with several congregations, the church with which the bishop was associated acquired a certain priority. This helps explain how the bishop alone was authorized to conduct certain ecclesiastical rites such as the Eucharist, the ordination of office-bearers, and absolution.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “In Roman Catholicism the episcopacy also developed into a papal system, with the bishop of Rome having preeminent authority.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “This is the system by which various Christian churches have been organized, the Greek Orthodox and many other Eastern churches and sects.” ↩
Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (London: A. M. for William Lee, 1654), bk. 6, 467-468: “The high Priest was set over the other Priests, and over the Levites… The twelve Apostles were more eminent then the seventy Disciples, and not only exceeded in excellency of Gifts, but in amplitude of Authority and power. Now (say they) it is the constant Doctrine of all the Fathers, that the Bishops succeeded the Apostles in the ordinary Government of the Church, as also the Presbyters succeeded the Seventy Disciples.” ↩
Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity, bk. 6, 468, quoting Bishop John Davenant, Determinationes, no. 42: “We confesse… that according to Christs appointment all the Apostles were equal in degree and power, but we deny that that parity among the Ministers of the Gospel is here or any where established… the chief Pastours were appointed by the Apostles in the Church of Ephesus and Crete, which had power of jurisdiction over the Presbyters of those Churches.” ↩
Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity, bk. 6, 467-468, quoting Daniel Featley: “The Christian world saw no other Government for fourteen hundred years after Christ… Episcopacy was either planted by the Apostles or their immediate Successors in the first and best ages of the Church.” ↩
Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), chap. 6, “Acts 11:30, First Jewish Christian Elders,” 79-88: “In the early centuries of Christianity, it was commonly thought that James was the bishop of Jerusalem and the elders were his clergy.” ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 8. ↩
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 31, “Of Synods and Councils.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “The New Testament does not know of any official distinction between overseer (episkopos) and elder (presbyteros); it does not recognize a special institution of the episcopate alongside the presbyterate… There is no hierarchy in the church of Christ.” ↩
Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity, bk. 6, 468, quoting Jerome: “The order of Bishops came in by meer custome of the Church, to avoid Schisms which arose for want of Heads.” ↩
Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity, bk. 6, 468, quoting Smectymnuus, An Answer to a Booke Entituled, An Humble Remonstrance, sect. 13: “The Question is concerning Officers of the same kinde, and the instance is of Officers of different kinds, amongst whom there may be superiority and inferiority, as there is amongst us between Presbyters and Deacons. The Apostles were superiour to Evangelists and Pastors, but one Apostle had not superiority over another.” ↩
Strauch, Biblical Eldership, chap. 3, “Shared Leadership,” 43-60: “the Gospels give Peter no special, exclusive title to differentiate him from the other apostles. He was not the presiding bishop of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15:6-29), nor the senior apostle… He was subject to his fellow apostles as a group.” ↩
Strauch, Biblical Eldership, chap. 6, “Acts 11:30, First Jewish Christian Elders,” 79-88: “These ideas have no basis in Scripture, however. Acts 15 reveals that ‘the apostles and elders’ met together as a council.” ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 10, “Creator of Heaven and Earth”: “we may not deduce from Revelation 1:20, etc., that every church has its angel; the ‘angels’ (angeloi, messengers) of the seven churches are their ministers, the representatives of the churches.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “In Roman Catholicism the episcopacy also developed into a papal system, with the bishop of Rome having preeminent authority… This is the system by which various Christian churches have been organized, the Greek Orthodox and many other Eastern churches and sects.” ↩
Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity, bk. 6, 469, quoting Theodore Beza: “There is (saith Beza) Episcopus Divinus, Humanus, & Diabolicus; by the divine Bishop he means the Bishop as he is taken in Scripture, which is one and the same with a Presbyter. By the humane Bishop he means the Bishop chosen by the Presbyters to be President over them, and to rule with them by fixed Laws and Canons. By the Diabolical Bishop he means a Bishop with sole power of Ordination and Jurisdiction, lording it over Gods Heritage.” ↩