• It was essential to St. Paul's apostolate that he should not have received his spiritual gifts through other apostles. Again the prophets and teachers at Antioch lay bands on I{arniib.as and Saul. But here also we have a ifpeciat dii'ine aiilh'iriza- timi; and it is to set apart two already of their own "order "to a special work.'
For the reasons stated it seems impossible to view the incident at Antioch as a conferring of the apostleship on Barnabas and Saul. But it was a solemn assignment to them, under the direction of the Holy Ghost, of an extended work among the Gentiles, and all the accompaniments befitted this new departure. When Barnabas received the apostleship there is no record. But as he was consttantly in touch with the Twelve, and was, so to speak, the connecting link between them and St. Paul, and as there is no claim that he received the apostleship direct from our Lord, it is probable tliat he received it from the Twelve on some occasion which is not recorded.
9. The action of the presbyters in Timothy's ordination. — We have hitherto refrained from asking to what office Timothy was ordained. And it is perhaps unnecessary for our present pur- pose to do so. But, at any rate, Timothy was one of those ' apostolic men ' who shared in the itinerant ministry of the apostles, though they were not themselves apostles ; he was not one of the local ministry, though for a time he was re- sident at Ephesus. There is no reason to suppose that he passed from one office to another, as the ordained of later .ages have done ; and we may in all probability take his ordination referred to in the Pastoral Epistles as being his only ordination, and as his ordination to the office which he held when St. Paul addressed his two letters to him.
Now in 1 Ti 4'^ the charisma (see above, 7) is said to have been given to Timotlij' through (oid) prophecy (see above, 1), with (iJ-crd) the laying on of the hands of the presbytery (TrpfafivTeiiiov). And in 2 Ti 1* the ' charisma of God ' is said to be in Timothy ' through (5id) the laying on of [St. Paul's] hands.' It seems hardly possible to inter- pret these words otherwise than of Timothy's ordination.* And it is difficult to interpret the presbytery otherwise than as the body of presbyters referred to in 1 Ti 5", etc. The usual interpreta- tion seems to be the right one, that in the above passages we have the prototype of an arrangement which was once probably universal, or certainly widespread, in both East and West, and which still survives in the West. We maj' think of St.
* Chase (Con_fir}natio7t in the Apostolic Afie, p. 35) takes 2 Ti 1*J (not 1 Ti 4i-i) as referring to Timothy's confirmation, though he stands almost alone in doing so. lie interprets 1 Ti 41-1 as is done by the present writer, and understands it to mean that St. Paul and the presbyters together laid hatids on Timothy at his ordination.
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Paul laying his hands on Timothy, with the active concurrence of the local presbyters, who lay on hands together with the Apostle. But the ditler- ence of preposition is significant ; in the case of St. Paul 5id, in the case of the presbyters fierd, is used. The latter word would seem to indicate that the act was one of St. Paul's in which the presbyters by their deed concurred. There is, indocil, a slight difficulty in this interpretation. The arrangement, formerly in the East and still in the West, to which reference has been made, is that at the ordination of a presbyter the presbyters lay hands on his head together with the ordaining bishop, tliough tlie latter alone says the words. But this custom is not mentioned till the 4th cen- tury. We lind it in the Eriyptinn and Ethiopic Church Orders, the Testament of Our Lord, and the Verona Latin Fragments of the Didascalia, etc.; also c. A.D. 500 in the '(iallican Statutes' (above, 3); see ERE, art. 'Ministry,' 8. The custom may probably be traced to the lost original of the parallel Church Orders— that is, to the 3rd centurJ^ Of the intervening period between the Pastoral Epistles and that date we know nothing in respect to this m.itter. It is therefore possible that the arrangement in question was not con- tinuously in use, but was adopted in the 3rd cent, because of the interpretation then given to the passage in 1 Timothy. And it was confined to the ordination of a presbyter, for when a bishop was ordained the other bishops laid on hands, but no presbyters, unless possibly — this is very un- certain— in the Canons of Hippolytus ; while in the NT there is no indication that the local pres- ■ byters laid on hands with Paul and Barnabas when they ' appointed ' presbyters for each church : indeed, pi'obably there were no presbyters present other than the newly-ordained. Nevertheless, though the arrangement may possibly not have been continued in the sub- Apostolic Age, and though the latter procedure was not altogether on all-fours with the apostolic arrangement, seeing that the whole local organization of the ministry luxd developed by the 3rd cent., it appears highly probable that St. Paul's meaning is that both he and the local presbyters laid hands on Timothy when the latter was ordained. Where this took place St. Paul does not say. It could hardly have been at Lystra, where Timothy was converted. A novice in the faith, such as he was when St. Paul took him into his company, would not have been ordained to the ministry (cf. 1 Ti 3^). Alford (Com. on 1 Ti 4''') suggests Ephesus, where Timothy was to exercise his ministry for a considerable time. And this would be in accordance with the idea that St. Paul refers to the concurrence of the presbytery because the Ephesian presbyters were likely to read his Epistle. But the point is of no great importance.