RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Organization
ippolytus makes it a serious charge against the hismatic church of Theodotus that they pay their ishop a monthly salary (cf. Hippolytus, liar., vii. J-24, x. 19, in ANF, v. 114-115, 147, with the full sferences there to passages in other writers). The development of a system of church law was ae to the concern of the Church for the whole life id thought of the faithful; besides the Church was placed in relations and even in i Develop- antagonistic relations with a highly ment of developed State, and so the need for Ecclesias- law arose. Its relation to the State tical Law. was a complicated one; it was subordinate yet opposed to it. Christians acjpted the material rights of their position and their vie relations. There was an inclination to substilte or to improve upon rights or legal relations dating in the State, and Paul himself was active in lis direction when he forbade Christians to have icourse to secular tribunals. As time went on a ical organization with its bishop, its clergy of presyters, and its deacons became consciously or unmsciously rivals of the municipal administration, rom this came the regular development into rovinces which finally led to an imperial organation. The Church system partly accepted and artly rejected the usages of the State. In many sspects as to slavery, marriage, attitude to cerlin classes of crime, support of the poor, and class quality, the Church showed itself more progressive lan the State. Hippolytus (Philosophumena, IX., ii.) gives an instance where a Roman bishop alixtus recognized as legal a kind of marriage hich was prohibited by Roman law when he gave is consent to a union of a Christian maiden with slave. [Secret concubinage rather than marriage, Jnnived at rather than actually permitted, seems ) be the object of the stricture of Hippolytus. h. n.] Church law in the narrow sense also goes ack to the second century. It is applied chiefly ) the power of the keys and to the development of Emance. Tertullian applies the word jus to bapsm, teaching, and the Scriptures. As to the ormization of the early heretical sects, it received tuch criticism from orthodox teachers, although ley had martyrs, churches, bishops, and presbyirs. The following passage from Tertullian about ie Marcionites is instructive:
" For I must not omit a description of the conduct also the heretics — how frivolous, how worldly, how merely iman, without seriousness, without authority, without displine, as befits their faith. To begin with, it is doubtful ho is a catechumen, and who a believer; they have all icess alike, they hear alike, they pray alike — even heathens, any such happen to come among them. . . Simplicity ley will have to consist in the overthrow of discipline, atntion to which on our part they call bawdry. . The
:ry women of these heretics, how wanton they are. They '6 bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to idertake cures, it may be even to baptize. Their ordinaans are carelessly administered, capricious, changeable. t one time they put novices in office; at another time men ho are bound to some secular employment, at another time en who have apostatized from us. . So it comes to iss that to-day one man is their bishop, to-morrow another, o-day he is a deacon who to-morrow is a reader; to-day 3 is a presbyter who to-morrow is a layman, for even on ymen do they impose the functions of priesthood " (De rascriptione, xli.; ANF, iii. 263).
The most prominent feature of the Montanistic
communities was the position they accorded to women (Epiphanius, liar., xlix. 2): "Women are bishops among them, presbyters are women and soon." Mention has been made of the distinction between the universal and the local organization of the Church, also of the conflict between these two factors.
A third factor soon appeared, the grouping of several churches together in a province. Paul organized his missions according to provinces. Authorities in the second century followed the same precedent. Cities like Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome became centers of Christian activity for the regions extending about them. As
io. Eccle- time went on the provincial system siastical was fully developed, and the limit of
Provinces, this development was not bounded by the frontiers of a province. The metropolitan constitution, the superior position accorded to one bishop over others in his neighborhood, is first to be seen in the second century. The road is already opened up for a universal bishop, the bishop of bishops, as Tertullian calls the Roman bishop. The metropolitan system was furthered by the practise of turning over to bishops of provincial chief cities epistolary communications with other communities and also by the custom of calling synods. These last were regarded as representative and had great influence, as is shown in Tertullian's words: " That representation of the whole Christian name is greeted with great veneration " (" On Fasting," xiii.) . Their organization was influenced by local secular assemblies, but they were regarded as being under the direction of the whole spirit and dealt with the weightiest questions of church life. All the elements of the later constitutional history of the Church are found in the first two centuries, even the de facto primacy of Rome. As time went on it can hardly be said that the church system became more complicated; as a matter of fact, in the earliest ages the organization of the Church was extremely complicated. If there was any change, it was in the direction of simplification. The first real break came in with the period of the Reformation. That not only destroyed the medieval organization of the Church, but it broke entirely with the church system of the first and second centuries. All that the Reformation insisted on was the preaching of the Word of God and that some office must be found for this preaching. See Clergy; Church, The Christian, II.— III. ; Elders; Episcopate; Parish and Pastor; Presbyter. (A. Harnack.)
Bibliography : Much pertinent literature will be found named in and under the articles Apostolic Council; Church, The Christian; Clergy; Didache; also in the articles on the Fathers and patristic works named in the text; consult as well the books on the history of the Ante-Nicene Church, e.g., Schaff, Christian Church, vol. i., chap, x., vol. ii., chap. iv. The three books of first importance here are the essay of J. B. Lightfoot on The Christian Ministry in his commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians, 6th ed„ London, 1881; E. Hatch, Organization of the Early Christian Churches, 5th ed., ib. 1895; and A. Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, 2d ed., Leipsic, 1906, Eng. transl., The Expansion of Christianity, 2d ed., 2 vols., New York, 1909; cf. also his Entstehung und Entwicklung der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechtes in den zwei ersten Jahrhunderten, Leip-
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