St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (2024)

2.1 Ancient Judaism

Prior to the ministries that emerged in the earliest Christian communities are the series of office holders and ministers in ancient Judaism. Jewish ministries provided the Christian community with precedent and language as both models and theological vocabulary that have shaped Christian understandings of ministry to this day.

The tripartite offices of the Jerusalem Temple – high ‘priest’, ‘priest’, and levite – would exert a strong theological influence on much later Christian reflection on ordained ministry. However, one can quickly dismiss the notion that the shape of the Temple offices was any kind of structural basis for the threefold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon which emerged from the post-apostolic era in the Christian Church.

The more complex and enduring influence of the Jerusalem Temple for Christian reflection on ordained ministry has been the ‘priestly’ service of offering the sacrificial worship of the Temple. Here it is vital to keep in mind that the English word ‘priest’ derives from the Latin word presbyter, itself derived from the Greek word presbuteros, meaning ‘elder’. The liturgical ministry of one who offers a sacrifice in Hebrew, however, is a kohen, which in Greek is a hierous, translated in Latin as sacerdos, which gives rise to the English word ‘sacerdotal’ linked with the verb ‘to sacrifice’. The Greek and Hebrew titles related to those who offer sacrifice in the Temple bear no etymological connection to the current English word ‘priest’, which derives from the Old English prēost, a contraction of the word presbyter.

From the Letter to the Hebrews (4.14–6; 5.1–10), the death of Jesus as a sacrifice (thusia), leads to the understanding of Jesus as High Priest (arche-hierous) or a ‘priest’ (hierous) after the order of Melchizedek. As will be seen, in later Christian teaching and polemic, much theological reflection revolved around the transfer of ‘priestly’ or ‘sacerdotal’ language to certain ordained ministries, particularly around the Eucharistic presidency of bishops and presbyters.

The Hebrew Bible witnesses to different kinds of leadership within ancient Judaism beyond the Jerusalem Temple, notably the prophets, teachers (rabbis), and elders (presbyters). The roles of the prophets are witnessed to in the various prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc. The Second Book of Kings identifies Huldah, the wife of Shallum, as a prophet (2 Kings 22.14-20). The role of the prophet was to convey God’s will as a word to the people. As such, it was a charismatic office which was recognised by the community, rather than appointed by the community. Although the term ‘rabbi’ is not used in the Hebrew Bible, by the first century in the common era rabbis were recognised as teachers, and thus they were spiritual leaders in ancient Jewish communities to the present day. Jesus was called ‘rabbi’ throughout the Gospels. Lastly, there is Moses’ appointment of the 70 elders, those who shared a governance role within the community. These ancient Jewish offices of community leadership are carried over in the nascent Christian Church within the first century.

2.2 The Gospels and Acts of the Apostles

The Gospel ministries of the Twelve and the Seventy-Two associated with the ministry of Jesus, as well as the ministries of the Seven from the Acts of the Apostles, are the earliest ministries of the post-Resurrection community. The numeric nature of these ministries is symbolically significant, once again pointing to the twelve tribes of Israel and the seventy(-two) elders appointed by Moses at the Exodus.

From the patristic writers onwards, theologians from East and West have associated these three ministries with the three-fold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. There is, however, no association within the New Testament between the later three-fold ministry and the ministries of the Twelve, the Seventy-two, and the Seven. After the appointment of the Seven, Acts does not refer to the Twelve again, but rather to ‘Apostles’, which by the inclusion of people like Paul and Barnabas, was an expanded understanding of the apostolic ministry.

The Christian presbyterate, from the Greek term presbyteros meaning ‘elder’, reflects the inherited Jewish office of elder. Acts 15.4-6 refers to the gathering of the ‘apostles and the elders’ presided over by James, reflecting a Christian version of the Jewish Sanhedrin led by elders. Later in Acts 20.17-18, 28, Paul’s discourse to the Ephesian elders/presbyters uses the Greek terms presbyteros and episkopos synonymously. While the use of the terms elders (presbyteros) and overseers (episkopos) are significant here, nothing is said about their function. It may well be that they reflect ministries from the late first century, rather than the structures of the mid-first century.

2.3 The Pauline Epistles

The letters of Paul witness to a variety of ecclesial ministries, such as the list mentioned in the Letter to the Ephesians:

He himself granted that some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. (Eph. 4.11–12, NRSVue)

These itinerant ministers established and sustained local Christian communities, as seen in the ministries of Paul and Barnabas. Significantly, Paul mentions a woman, Junia, as an apostle in the letter to the Romans (16.7).

In only one instance does Paul refer to ‘bishops and deacons’ (episkopois kai diakonois), namely in his salutation to the church at Philippi (Phil 1.1). It is not clear whether here episkopos kai diakonos refers to two distinct ministries or to a single group of leaders within the Philippian church. In the ancient Greek-speaking Gentile world, an episkopos or ‘overseer’ could refer to any sort of role of oversight or supervision. Similarly, the term diakonos could refer to a variety of service functions, ranging from community officers to table servants. While the two terms are significant in so early a text as a genuine Pauline epistle, they ought not to be equated with the later and distinct offices of bishop and deacon. Their mention here, however, marks a continuity with the later bishops and deacons.

An important reference to a particular deacon appears in the last chapter of Romans. In Romans 16.1–2 Paul commends Phoebe the deacon to the Roman church:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon (diakonos) of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord, as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well. (Romans 16.1–2, NRSVue)

This reference is too early to be identified with the later diaconate, but it is nonetheless significant that Paul identifies Phoebe as a Christian woman and leader. It is also significant and curious that Phoebe in the Greek original is identified as a ‘diakonos’ rather than the feminine case ‘diakonissa’.

In the same chapter, Paul sends greetings to various members of the Roman community, including Andronicus and Junia (or Julia), who were with Paul in prison, and who were in Christ before Paul was (Romans 16.7). Eastern Orthodox tradition teaches that Andronicus and Junia were early evangelists to the pagan world in the first century.

2.4 The Pastoral Epistles

The Pastoral Epistles (c. 80–100) offer important evidence for later developments. They bear witness to a fluid use of both the ministries of the Jewish elder/presbyter as well as the Gentile bishop and deacon. 1 Timothy speaks of the office of bishop in some detail, referring to the bishop in the singular (3.1–7) as well as the work of the deacons in the plural (3.8–13). By the time of the Pastoral Epistles, in some places bishops and deacons were clearly distinct ministries. Yet 1 Timothy also refers to presbyters or elders (5.17–19). 1 Timothy also witnesses in a lengthy description (5.3–16) to the early roots of the order of widows, whose ministries included prayer, good works, and hospitality. In the Letter to Titus, the terms presbyter and bishop are applied to the same office holders:

I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done and should appoint elders (presbyteros) in every town, as I directed you: someone who is blameless, married only once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not rebellious. For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless. (Titus 1.5–7, NRSVue)

2.5 What did Christian ministers do in this period?

The apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers who appear in the Pauline letters were itinerant ministers, serving multiple communities, and seemingly on the go. They would have travelled around the eastern Mediterranean bringing the Good News to people who had never heard of Jesus Christ. They also would have gathered the newly converted into a regularly gathered community, called an ‘ecclesia’ or church. They would have baptised those who they converted. Continuing care of these emerging churches would have been exercised through personal visits and letters/epistles. The existing letters of Paul, for instance, became the earliest books of the New Testament.

As well, the itinerant leaders would have appointed local leaders – such as the bishops and deacons, or elders/presbyters – who would have gathered the community together on the Lord’s Day. At best, we can infer that the local leaders – the bishops or presbyters – would have presided at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper on the first day of the week, that is, Sunday.

The ministries of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers disappeared within the timeline of the New Testament. Their functions, however, were assumed by the local ministers: the bishops and deacons in the Gentile communities, and the presbyters in the Jewish Christian communities.

2.6 Summary

The New Testament authors do not offer a coherent description or theological understanding of the earliest Christian ministries. However, references to various ministries at different times and in different contexts are important witnesses to the emergence of what would become the distinctive ministries within the life of the church. First are the symbolic and numeric ministries of the Twelve, the Seventy-Two, and the Seven. These ministries are links with the ministry of Jesus, or in the case of the Seven, with the post-Pentecost church.

The permanent ministries within the Jewish Christian communities held the title of elder/ presbyter. The Gentile communities were led by bishops and deacons. By the time of the Pastoral Epistles, there was a mixing of the Jewish and Gentile terminologies for the local ministries of bishops and deacons, and presbyters. By the time of 1 Timothy, the leadership of some early Christian communities were led by a single bishop, who might also be styled as a presbyter. In short, the later three-fold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon is not found in the New Testament evidence, but its roots, terminology and functions are there.

The New Testament witnesses to the ministries of women in the earliest Christian communities, represented by Junia the apostle, Phoebe the deacon, and the unnamed widows.

Later Christian reflection on ordained ministries, especially from the churches shaped by the Reformation, affirm that the inherited structures of ordained ministry are evident in the New Testament. Some find in the New Testament the biblical warrant for the three-fold pattern of bishops, presbyters, and deacons; others have identified the pattern of ministry to be that of apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers. The developments of Christian ministry in the first century are evidently more complex.

Likewise, understanding ‘apostolic succession’ as the Twelve Apostles appointing the first bishops of the church, who in turn appointed other bishops throughout history, finds no biblical warrant. A more helpful way to understand apostolic succession is within a broader ecclesiological horizon. As the Commission on Faith and Order’s Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry has succinctly affirmed:

The primary manifestation of apostolic succession is to be found in the apostolic tradition of the Church as a whole. The succession is an expression of the permanence and, therefore, of the continuity of Christ’s own mission in which the Church as a whole participates. Within the Church the ordained ministry has a particular task of preserving and actualising the apostolic faith.

3.1 The Didache

Written in Antioch, thus in the East, in the late first century, the Didache – or the ‘Teaching of the Apostles’ – witnesses to the ongoing transition from the leadership of the itinerant ministries of apostles, prophets, and teachers to the more resident ministers, named in the Didache as ‘bishops and deacons’. However, the author of the Didache is more interested in the itinerant ministries, especially the prophets who are named as presiders at the eucharist.

In one significant instance, however, the Didache refers to the bishops and deacons. The text mentions the local ministers of bishops and deacons only once, with no reference to presbyters or elders:

Appoint for yourselves, therefore, bishops and deacons who are worthy of the Lord [...] For they are also performing for you the task of the prophets and teachers. (Didache 15.1–2)

This is evidence of the roles of the prophets and teachers being assumed by the local bishops and deacons. In Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, episkopos kai diakonos appear together, with the same uncertainly as to whether the terms refer to two distinct ministries, or to a single group of leaders within the Antiochian church.

3.2 First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

From the late–first century church in Rome, c.95, 1 Clement deals primarily with ordained ministry. Clement himself was a Roman presbyter and may have been the head of the council of presbyters in the ancient Roman church. Like the Didache, 1 Clement discusses the ministries of episkopoi kai diakonoi, with the ongoing uncertainty as to whether these are two different ministries or one ministry.

Significantly, 1 Clement also mentions presbyters, and it is possible that the titles of bishop and presbyter are applied to the same ministers, and are used interchangeably. In other words, the ‘bishops and deacons’ are the ‘presbyters’. Despite the lack of clarity in terminology, it is clear from 1 Clement that in the Roman church at least, and possibly in the Corinthian community, the principal leaders and ministers at the end of the first century are the ‘bishops and deacons’/ ‘presbyters’. It also is evidence of the blending of the Jewish Christian and the Gentile Christian structures of local ministries, at least terminologically. Thus 1 Clement witnesses to an early stage towards what will become the classic threefold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon.

3.3 Ignatius of Antioch

The first indisputable evidence of a recognisable three-fold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon appears in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, c.110. This evidence reflects developments that are not seen in the Antiochian Didache or the letter of Clement of Rome, at least to the churches in Asia Minor to whom Clement writes. Ignatius of Antioch provides the first recorded evidence of a ‘mono-episcopate’, that is, a single bishop presiding over a local church, assisted by presbyters and deacons.

A noted feature of Ignatius’ treatment of the three-fold ministry in his epistles are the typologies used. The bishop is likened to God the Father, the presbyters to the Apostles, and the deacon to Jesus (Epistle to the Trallians 3.1). For Ignatius, the three-fold ministry has become an ecclesiological priority.

It is noteworthy, however, that six of the seven letters Ignatius refers to the bishop of a local church. The one exception is the church in Rome, which likely did not know the leadership of a single bishop at that time, but was led by a council of presbyters until the middle of the second century. Again, it is likely Clement of Roman (above) was a presbyter, and the likely head of the council of presbyters in the ancient Roman church.

3.4 Justin Martyr

A significant mid-second century witness to ordained ministry is from the apologist Justin Martyr, a layperson writing from Rome. His First Apology was written in Greek to a broad, non-Christian Roman readership to explain Christian faith and practice. As such, it contains valuable information on ordained ministries.

In his description of the eucharist, Justin does not refer to the celebrant as a bishop or a presbyter, but by the more generic title of ‘presider’ (proestos). The deacons are clearly distinguished as a distinct ministry. This use of language may have been employed to make the text more accessible to a pagan, non-Christian audience. Or more likely, it may simply reflect the absence of the mono-episcopate in the Roman church. Or Justin may simply be aware that there was a variety of patterns of Christian ministry across the Roman Empire in the mid-second century, such as ‘bishops and deacons’, the mono-episcopate with presbyters and deacons, or an ongoing leadership of presbyters in some churches.

Despite the lack of precision about structures and nomenclature of second-century ministries, Justin unequivocally affirms the nexus between ordained ministry and eucharistic presidency.

3.5 Irenaeus of Lyon

Writing from the Greek-speaking context in Lyons, c.180, Irenaeus of Lyon is a valuable source of developments in ordained ministry. In his Adversus haereses Irenaeus reflects that the structure of the ministries of bishop, presbyter, and deacon has become normative. Irenaeus, however, appears to use the terms ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter’ interchangeably. Closer reflection shows that for Irenaeus, the bishop is the presbyter in succession to the apostolic college; from the bishop stem all the other presbyters in a church. It is worth noting that Irenaeus was a presbyter before being elected as bishop of Lyon. And there is no evidence that Irenaeus was ordained to the episcopate by a bishop or other bishops. It is more likely that he was elected and appointed by the college of presbyters of the church of Lyon.

Irenaeus contributes to an emerging theological understanding of ‘apostolic succession’. For Irenaeus, this succession is primarily one of authentic apostolic teaching, centred on the collective teaching of the bishops across the Christian world. Irenaeus contrasts this authentic episcopal teaching with the heretical teaching of schismatic Christian communities, such as the Gnostics. For Irenaeus the continuity of episcopal teaching and doctrine is a manifestation of the authentic succession from the apostolic church.

3.6 Tertullian

From North Africa, the late–second century theologian Tertullian (c. 160–220) is a significant source on early Christian ministry, and the first Latin author to address ordained ministry. In addition to the threefold ministry – in Latin for the first time: episcopus, presbyter, et diaconus – Tertullian also mentions the ministry of lector or reader, one of the ministries that would later be among the minor orders.

Tertullian reflects a new theological understanding of the bishop, namely as ‘high-priest’. While this is a limited reference, it is the first identification of episcopal ministry as ‘priestly’ in the sense of a sacerdotal minister, that is, one who offers a sacrifice, namely the eucharist.

Tertullian is also the earliest witness of the use of the Latin word ordo and with it, ‘ordination’. In the ancient Roman world, the term ordo was used to differentiate social classes, such as the members of the senatorial or equestrian ‘orders’, serving in positions of leadership in the Empire’s civil and military services. The use of the word ordo in the church on the basis of the analogy of state leadership and the Roman society marks the beginning of a significant distinction between the churches’ ordained leaders and the communities of the baptised whom they served.

3.7 The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus

The earliest collection of liturgical rites is found in The Apostolic Tradition (AT), is attributed to Hippolytus of Rome and conventionally dated c. 215. The original text, which no longer exists, would have been written in Greek. As well as the liturgies of Christian initiation and the eucharist, the AT also includes the earliest extant ordination rites. Ordinations rites from antiquity to the present are indispensable documents for any theology of ministry.

The AT includes ordination liturgies for bishops, presbyters, and deacons, who are all ordained through the liturgical gesture of the laying-on-of-hands and prayer. The AT also contains the liturgical appointment to the other ministries: confessors, widows, lectors, virgins, subdeacons, and those with the gift of healing. Appointments to these other ministries do not include the imposition of hands. Notable is the mention of women in the ministries of widows and virgins. Equally notable is the absence of the ministries of deaconesses in the AT, as they are attested elsewhere in the third century, such as the Syrian Didascalia apostolorum.

The AT directs that bishops are to be ordained in the presence of other bishops, presumably from other churches, as well as the local people and their presbyters and deacons. One bishop lays hands on the candidate and says the ordination prayer. A variety of images are used to describe the ministry of the bishop in the ordination prayer, including the sacerdotal image of ‘the high-priesthood’ and ‘the Spirit of the high-priesthood’.

The AT directs that in the ordination of a presbyter, the presbyters as a college join with their bishop in the laying-on-of-hands on the new presbyter. This practice may reflect an earlier time in the Roman church when it was led by presbyters, and when it was the presbyters who laid-on-hands upon the new member of their college. In the AT, only the bishop lays hands on the deacon, which likely reflects the earlier relationship between the episkopoi kai diakonoi. Appointments to the ministries of widows, readers, virgins, subdeacons, and healers in the AT do not include the laying-on-of-hands. Later generations in both East and West will make the distinction between the ‘major’ and ‘minor’ orders.

The AT reflects the significance of the diaconate and the subdiaconate. In addition to assuming the care of the sick and the needy within the Christian community, deacons also fulfilled a series of liturgical tasks, most importantly with regard to Christian initiation, where adult candidates were immersed naked into the baptismal waters by the deacons.

3.8 The Didascalia apostolorum

The Didascalia apostolorum, an Eastern Christian text, was written in Syria between the late second and early fourth centuries, and may well be contemporary with The Apostolic Tradition, albeit from a vastly different context. It also reflects the importance of the mono-episcopate in the local church and the qualities sought in bishops. It identifies the bishop as the head of the presbytery. The text uses imagery from the Trinity as a way of understanding the person and work of Christian ministers:

But let him [the bishop] be honoured by you as [is God], because the bishop sits for you in the place of God All Mighty. But the deacon stands in the place of Christ, and you should love him. The deaconess, however, shall be honoured by you in the place of the Holy Spirit. But the presbyters shall be to you in the likeness of the apostles.

The Didascalia suggests that while the presbyters have a teaching role in the Christian community, they function as an ‘advisory board’ for the bishop. However, it is the bishops and the deacons and deaconesses who are the liturgical and pastoral leaders of the community, in the image of the Trinity.

The Didascalia is a significant witness to the diaconate of both men and women in the ancient Syrian church. The deaconesses attended to the pastoral needs of women in the Christian community. They had a significant role in the Christian initiation of women, such as baptismal catechesis. At the baptisms of women, the deaconesses accompanied the naked female candidates into the baptismal pools for the water rite and the final anointing. It would have been culturally inappropriate for male deacons to so serve women candidates.

3.9 Cyprian of Carthage

The mid-third century North African theologian Cyprian of Carthage (c. 210–258) provides evidence of further Western developments in the theology of ministry. For instance, Cyprian reflects the emerging language of ordo, drawn from Roman social ‘orders’, to distinguish the clergy from the laity. Additionally, Cyprian also reflects another borrowing from Latin imperial practice: the ‘promotion’ from one Christian ministry to another. Cyprian uses the word gradus or ‘grade’ in relationship to ordained ministries, also borrowed from the Roman civil and military service, which entailed serial promotions from one grade to a higher grade. The so-called cursus honorum – the ‘career of honour’ – was an effective way to test and train members of the Roman military and Imperial leaders. Within the ordained ministries of the Church, at this time a minister would be ‘promoted’ from one ministry to a ‘higher’ one, for example, the promotion from the diaconate to the presbyterate, or from the diaconate or from the presbyterate to the episcopate.

Cyprian notes the clerical cursus or career of Cornelius, bishop of Rome (251–253). He notes that Cornelius was not made a bishop suddenly, but ‘was promoted through all the ecclesiastical offices’; and that he ‘ascended through all the grades of religion’ (Epistle 55.8). Cyprian is an early witness to the beginnings of ordained ministry as an ecclesiastical career, reflecting the Roman military and civil cursus honorum with promotion from one order of Christian ministry to another.

3.10 Cornelius of Rome

The fourth-century Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–339) purports to contain a letter from Cornelius, the mid–third century bishop of Rome (see above), in which he describes the organisation of the church in the city of Rome: one bishop, 46 presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, readers, and doorkeepers. It is the ordering that is remarkable here, namely the later major and minor orders of the Western church.

The seven deacons and subdeacons here reflects the seven districts for outreach to the poor and needy in the Christian community, following the example of the Seven in the Acts of the Apostles. Such was the importance of service or diakonia in Rome and elsewhere, that often it was the senior deacon who would be elected as the new bishop.

3.11 Ministries of women

The principal Western text on ministries from the early third century, The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus from the church in Rome, witnesses to the important women’s ministries of widow and virgin. It does not mention, however, female deacons. It will not be until the early fifth century that conclusive evidence identifies Western female deacons.

By contrast, from the Eastern church the Syrian Didascalia apostolorum refers specifically to the ministry of deaconesses. Within its Trinitarian framework, the bishop represents the Father, the deacon the Son, and the deaconess the Holy Spirit. Presbyters, however, represent the very earthly apostles.

Again, given social attitudes, the female deacons ministered to other women and to children in pastoral contexts, and liturgically at baptisms of adult women.

3.12 What did Christian ministers do in this period?

The period from the second and third centuries provides much more information about the life and work of ordained ministers. From around the beginning of the second century, the primary ministers of the scattered churches were no longer the ‘apostles and prophets, evangelist and teachers’, but rather the evolving local ministries of bishops and deacons, or presbyters/bishops, or presbyters and deacons. The local churches were geographically based, meeting to celebrate the eucharist and Christian initiation in the house of the leaders. These ‘house churches’ interacted with other churches in neighbouring towns and villages through the interactions of their bishops with one another. Bishops, as seen in the AT, assisted other local churches in the appointment or ordination of new bishops.

Bishops emerge as a ministry of unity within and beyond their local churches. The local bishop presided at the Sunday eucharist and preached. The bishop presided over baptism with other ministers, especially deacons and deaconesses. The bishop restored sinners to the communion of the church. The bishop appointed all the other ministers in a local church.

Associated with Christian initiation, the bishop was the primary teacher within the local Christian community. The bishop’s chair in the local house churches was essentially a teacher’s chair. Normally, but not exclusively, bishops in this period emerged as the formal teachers and definers of Christian theology, such as Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–c.107) and Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–c.200). There were, however, notable exceptions. The North African theologian Tertullian (c. 160–c. 225) was either a presbyter or a layperson. The Alexandrian theologian Origen (c. 185–c. 254) was a presbyter. By contrast, the mid–second century Roman apologist Justin Martyr (c. 100–c.165) was a layperson. The explications of the emerging Christian theology by the bishops (and others) were not just to articulate the developing consensus of faith of the church community; increasingly bishops had to respond theologically to the propositions of many emerging heretical Christian communities, such as the various Gnostic teachings.

The presbyters emerge as a collective ministry or ‘college’. They worked with the bishops, to whom they were the principal advisors. In the absence of a bishop, one of the presbyters would preside at the eucharist. In some churches, for instance the Church of Alexandria, presbyters elected and ordained one of their colleagues as the next bishop during this period.

One of the most important roles of Christian ministry in this period was ‘service’ or diakonia within the early Christian community and beyond. The churches’ diakonia became institutionalised fairly quickly, with the office of deacon assisted by the subdeacons, with ministry to women and children by the deaconesses. The deacons, male and female, took care of the poor, the sick, those in prison, in a society in which social service was largely absent.

The diaconal work was overseen by a senior deacon, who much later would be styled as ‘archdeacon’. From early times, the deacons led the intercessions at the eucharist as they knew who needed the prayer of the community. Significantly, the final words at the eucharist were not the bishop’s blessing but the deacon’s dismissal of the community to love and serve the world.

There were other ministries that emerged in these early centuries whose significance may not be fully appreciated. The lectors or readers, for instance, proclaimed the Scriptures when the community gathered for liturgical prayer, especially the eucharist. The ancient lectors would have also kept the biblical books for safe keeping in their homes during times of persecution; many of the martyrs of these centuries were unnamed readers who refused to hand over the biblical books to the Roman authorities.

3.13 Summary

By the beginning of the second century, significant ministries had disappeared, namely the itinerant apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers. The local ministries of ‘bishops and deacons’ and ‘presbyters’ remained. From the early second century, these ministries developed and spread across the whole Christian church in a relatively short time. At the beginning of the third century, as witnessed the Apostolic Tradition, a recognisable three-fold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon was common to churches across the Christian world, and with it the mono-episcopate, that is, one bishop as the leader of one local church. By contrast, agreement on the books of the New Testament would not be achieved until the mid-fourth century.

In comparison to the New Testament and first-century evidence, from the beginning of the second century right up to the Council of Nicaea, the picture of what the ordained leaders did becomes clearer. The bishops emerge as the primary ministers of leadership and oversight of the growing Christian communities, often in times of persecution. Bishops were the primary preachers and teachers, presiding at Christian initiation and the eucharist. They reconciled penitents who had fallen into sin, and/or away from the church. Bishops appointed and supervised the ministries of the presbyters, deacons, deaconesses, widows and virgins, readers, doorkeepers, etc.

The three diaconal ministries – deacon, subdeacon, and deaconess – with the virgins and widows, offered pastoral and practical support to those in need within the church community, with the deaconesses, virgins, and widows attending to children and female members of the church.

In most places in this period, those who were discerned by their communities for ordained ministry were elected and appointed to one ministry for life. That is, a baptised person would be elected and ordained as the new bishop, or presbyter or deacon or lector, etc. Yet there is also evidence in this period of the beginnings of Christian ministers being ordained to one or more ministries. Given the early churches’ commitment to outreach and service, it was often a deacon who would be elected by the community to be the next bishop. In Rome, for instance, the senior deacon was the most likely candidate to be appointed as a bishop, whereas in other places, the natural candidates might have come from among the presbyters, or indeed, from among the baptised.

This period sees some limited evidence of the beginning of sacerdotal/‘priestly’ language being applied to the Christian ministers, initially to bishops in relationship to Eucharistic presidency. As noted above, this language and terminology first appears in the ordination prayer for a bishop in the AT as well as in the Didascalia. In subsequent periods, this theological direction will have an enormous impact on the theology and practice of Christian ministry, and indeed, for ecclesiology.

These instances of sacerdotal or ‘priestly’ language, combined with the usage of the ancient Roman concept of ordo, suggests that within the one ecclesial body of Christ, there is a sharp divide between the ordained and the rest of the people of God.

This period also sees the beginning of the cultural appropriation of the imperial Roman ordo and orders to distinguish Christian ministers from the rest of the community of the baptised, and indeed, to distinguish the different ‘orders’ of ministry from one another. Contemporary Christian traditions that employ terms such as ‘orders’, ‘holy orders’ and ‘ordination’, would do well to reflect on the original Roman imperial contexts of such concepts and language.

Within ‘mainstream’ or catholic Christianity, the ordered ministries of women are acknowledged, particularly the ministries of widows, virgins, and in the East at least, deaconesses. It must be noted, however, that within some heretical and schismatic Christian communities, such as the Montanists and other gnostic communities, there is evidence of women serving as bishops and presbyters. Because these practices were associated with heterodoxy, they were habitually condemned by the catholic churches.

4.1 Councils and canons

While the Council of Nicaea, 325, is best known for its Creed and its theological judgements against Arianism, it also enacted twenty canons dealing with various issues of church law and discipline, and the clergy. The canons on ordained ministries mark a new stage of development. For instance, Canon II forbade the ordination of the newly baptised as presbyters or bishops, a signal that this practice was taking place. Canons IX and X reflect the need for the examination of candidates.

The Council of Sardica in 342 was convened to deal with theological issues, but also mandated a series of canons on ordained ministries. Canon XIII mandates that no one can be ordained a bishop without lengthy service as a lector, deacon, and presbyter. Although the practice of sequential ordination was known in the earlier periods, this canon marks the first instance of sequential ordination being canonically mandated. The intent of the canon is to ensure a proper testing, formation, and selection of candidates for ministry.

Subsequent councils legislated on things like the minimum ages for ordained ministries, such as 25 for deacons. The minimum age for presbyters and bishops was 30, the traditional age of Jesus when his ministry began. Under the influence of monasticism, Western councils from the mid-fifth century began to legislate on clerical chastity for bishops, presbyters, and deacons.

4.2 Ordination liturgies

Unlike the pre-Nicene period, from which only one ordination rite – The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus – has survived, manuscripts of ordination rites from both East and West from the fourth century onward have survived. The rites, within and between Eastern and Western Christianity, reflect both common developments and a lack of uniformity.

While the three-fold order of bishop, presbyter, and deacon is consistent in both East and West, the number and the ordering of the minor orders remains fluid. Significantly, from the fourth century the Eastern ordinations of deaconesses and subdeacons include the laying-on-of-hands, the same liturgical gesture used in the ordination of bishops, presbyters, and deacons.

Within the Western church in this period, there is liturgical evidence of the diaconate becoming a grade or step towards presbyteral or episcopal ordination, rather than a life-long ministry. The Leonine Sacramentary, also known identified as the Verona Sacramentary, is the first Western ordination rite to survive after the AT, created sometime between the sixth and seventh centuries. It contains the prayer after the ordination of a deacon, that from the lower diaconal grade, the newly ordained deacon ‘may be worthy to take up higher things’, meaning either the presbyterate or the episcopate, or both.

The Leonine ordination prayers employ different kinds of imagery to describe the various orders of ministry. In particular, the prayers for bishops continue to use and develop sacerdotal imagery, especially from the Levitical high priesthood.

4.3 Ordained ministries as a ‘hierarchy’

A significant Byzantine contributor to the theology of ordained ministries, for both East and West, is the anonymous sixth-century Eastern theologian writing under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500). Central to the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius on ministry is the introduction of the term ‘hierarchy’, from the Greek heiros (sacred/‘priestly’) and arche (rule). Accordingly, ordained ministers were understood as constituting a theologically sacred order, a hierarchy established by God on earth, corresponding to the angelic hierarchy in heaven, and thus clearly distinguished from the laity. This appropriation of the language of hierarchy is similar to the use of the Latin ordo emerging in the previous period, with the ecclesiological consequence of a sharp distinction between Christian ministers and the baptised. Accordingly, within this framework the ecclesiastical orders with the divine origins of the triad of bishop, presbyter, and deacon were not simply different functions within the Christian community, but they represented different realms of being Christian.

4.4 The minor ministries

In addition to development of the major orders of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, the present period is important for the emerging minor ministries, which are neither uniform or finalised. Authors in this period, along the lines of the Pseudo-Dionysius, are fixated on numbers, especially the number seven, which too neatly were applied to the three major orders – bishops, presbyters, and deacons – and the varying quartets of minor orders. In the East, the minor orders were those of lector and subdeacon, while in the West there is a wider variety, including doorkeeper, exorcist, and acolyte, as well as lector and subdeacon. The order of subdeacon becomes more important, in both East and West.

4.5 Monasticism and ordained ministries

This period sees another development that would have a profound effect on ordained ministries in both East and West, namely the beginnings of the association between ordained ministry and monasticism. While originally a lay movement, early Christian monasticism also included presbyters and deacons for the liturgical needs of monastic communities. Within a short period of time from the fourth century, however, monastic practices, especially celibacy, began to shape the lives of non-monastic clergy.

The continuity of married bishops survived well into the early fourth century. However, under the influence of monasticism the preference in both East and Wests was towards celibate bishops. Despite canonical legislation insisting on a celibate clergy in the West, a married parish clergy remained a reality in Western Europe well into the twelfth century.

A similar trend is also seen in Eastern Christianity, with an increasingly emphasis on monastic bishops, with the ordination of monks in major and minor orders. In the East, however, parish presbyters and deacons normally remained married with children, and have remained so to the present time.

4.6 Ministries of ordained women

Significantly, in this period the widows and virgins are no longer mentioned among the minor ministries, as they are not part of the clerical cursus or career leading to ordination.

Liturgical rites from this period, preeminently The Apostolic Constitutions, a late fourth century text from the Syrian tradition, witnesses to the ongoing ministry of female deacons. The ordination of deaconesses includes prayer and the laying of the bishop’s hands on the candidate, a liturgical gesture used in the ordinations of bishops, presbyters, and male deacons.

Conclusive evidence of Western deaconesses appears only in the early fifth century, albeit in negative context. The Fourth Council of Orange (441) notes that deaconesses are not ordained, which admits that there were women deacons, whether they were technically ordained or not. A possible explanation is that Western widows were the equivalent of the Eastern deaconesses. There is further, but limited, evidence of women deacons in the early medieval church, and some remarkable deaconesses, such as Radegund of Poitiers (c. 520-587), sometime queen of the Franks, and abbess of the Holy Cross Abbey.

As long as candidates for baptism were adults in both East and West, deaconesses were the only socially appropriate ministers to assist in the baptisms of adult women, who as previously noted would have been naked as they entered the baptismal font on Easter eve. Women deacons were also still responsible for the catechetical preparation of women for Christian Initiation. Augustine’s teaching on original sin led fairly quickly to the normative baptism of newborn babies at any time in the year. The lengthy catechumenate for adult candidates was ended, along with the preeminence of Easter, and the connection with the bishop. The changes in baptism affected both male and female deacons, but especially the women, who were no longer necessary in the baptismal process for adult women.

4.7 Sequential ordination

In the first three centuries of the church, the lengthy period of Christian initiation culminating in baptism and eucharist at Easter was the basic formation for all Christians, including ordained ministers. As seen in the earlier periods, sequential ordination certainly took place in the pre-Nicene period, as well as the more traditional practice of direct ordination.

From the fourth century, however, the earlier practices were increasingly being manipulated by the unworthy, the incapable, and the ambitious, especially those who desired to become bishops, given the new civil status of the episcopate. The way to discern, test and train those discerned for ordained ministry was to mandate the adopted practice from the imperial military and civil service, namely a sequence of offices or grades for training and testing. The process used in some churches in the pre-Nicene period became normative in the fourth century, and is reflected in the canons of various councils such as Nicaea I and the Council of Sardica.

Despite the canonically mandated practice of sequential ordination in this period, exceptions abounded. For example, in the West, Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310–c. 367) was a married lay person when he was ordained a bishop in c. 353. Ambrose of Milan (c. 339-397) was a catechumen and thus not baptised when he was elected a bishop in 374; contemporary evidence indicates that he was baptised on one Sunday and ordained directly to the episcopate on the next. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was baptised in 387, ordained a presbyter in 391, and later a bishop in 395. In the Church of Rome from the fourth to the seventh century, a significant number of bishops continued to be elected and ordained directly from the diaconate. For example, Popes Leo the Great (440–461) and Gregory the Great (590–604), were ordained as bishops from the diaconate without ever having been ordained as presbyters.

The same fluidity is seen in the Eastern church at this time. For instance, Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373) was ordained from the diaconate to the episcopate in 328. Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389) was ordained presbyter in 367 then bishop in 372 . Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379) was ordained as a deacon in 362, then bishop in 370. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330–c. 395) was a lector when he was ordained a bishop in 372. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) was made a lector, and ordained a deacon, presbyter, and bishop. Nectarius of Constantinople (d. 397), like Ambrose of Milan, was not baptised when elected as a bishop; he was baptised and then ordained as a bishop in 381.

4.8 What did Christian ministers do in this period?

At the Peace of the Church under the Emperor Constantine from 313, every aspect of the Church’s life and mission was altered in one way or another; this is especially evident in development of ordained ministries. Bishops, for example, went from being the leaders of small, persecuted communities to well-trained and well-paid administrators of multiple parishes within a much larger framework of a geographical unit call a ‘diocese’, a Greek imperial term for a territorial province. They also became significant Roman civic leaders.

The bishop’s teaching chair or cathedra from the preceding period became more of an imperial throne within the fourth century. In this period, however, the bishops remained the primary teachers and definers of Christian faith and theology. It was the bishops who gathered for local councils and the seven ecumenical councils from Nicaea I to Nicaea II.

Notable Western episcopal theologians in this era were Ambrose of Milan (c. 339–397), Augustine of Hippo (345–430), and Gregory, Bishop of Rome (c. 540–604). Notable Eastern episcopal theologians of this era were Athanasius of Alexandria (c.296–373), Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389), Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330–c.395), and Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), monk and Archbishop of Thessaloniki, and many others. Presbyters were some of the most significant theologians in this period. The biblical scholar and translator St Jerome (c. 342–c.420) was a presbyter. Notably, the two of the major heretical theologians of this era, Arius (d. 336) and Pelagius (c. 354–418), were both presbyters. There were significant theologians at this time who were deacons, such as Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–373) and John Cassian (c. 360–c. 435).

Until the early fifth century, bishops remained the primary celebrants of baptism at Easter, when the vast numbers to be baptised were still adults. While bishops would have continued to baptise children, the unique link between the bishop and baptism was effectively removed in both East and West. In the Western Church, the bishops continued to administer the final anointing of Christian Initiation to baptised children years later, which later took the name ‘confirmation’. By contrast, in the Eastern Church presbyters presided at the whole of the rites of Christian Initiation.

The older house-churches became parishes within dioceses. The parish churches were led by presbyters, and assisted by deacons, deaconesses and subdeacons, and the minor orders. In this period the presbyters became the normative presiders at Christian initiation, the eucharist – including preaching – and other sacraments in the parish churches, which in the previous era were exclusively episcopal.

The diaconate remained a significant ministry in the fourth century, with archdeacons, deacons, subdeacons, and deaconesses. Again, with the rapid shift to infant baptism in the early fifth century, the liturgical role of deacons and deaconesses at baptism decreased as adult candidates were no longer candidates. Given the historic link between the baptism of adult women and women deacons, this new context became one of decline. By the time of the great missionary efforts in both East and West began centuries later, with the initiation of whole peoples to Christianity, the older catechumenate with its lengthy formation, celebrated at Easter with large fonts, and the baptismal ministries of deacons and deaconesses were lost and forgotten.

While Christian monasticism has its origins in the pre-Nicene period, it flourished from the fourth century onwards. While originally a lay movement, the monasteries in this period included significant numbers of ordained monastic ministers. The monastic clergy would become a compelling model for Christian ministry as a whole, especially the requirement of clerical celibacy.

4.9 Summary

The new relationship between Christianity and the Roman Empire established by Constantine in 313 had consequences for every aspect of Christian life, including ordained ministries. While the ministries are largely those inherited from the pre-Nicene period, the process of inculturation marks a number of developments. Bishops had significant administrative responsibilities within their dioceses. As the Western Roman Empire declined from the early fifth century, Western bishops acquired more significant civic roles as well, as the older imperial administration had effectively disappeared across Western Europe.

Significantly, this period sees the beginnings of ordained ministry as an ‘honourable career’ – a cursus honorum – and with it, the use of one ministry to test and train candidates for ‘higher’ ministries, following the proven practice of Imperial Roman military ranks and political orders.

Increasingly in this period as well, the beginnings of understanding Christian ministries as an order or ordo in the Roman civic sense of the word, as well as a sacerdotal or ‘priestly’ quality of the ordained, especially bishops and later presbyters, effectively delineated two kinds of Christians: lay and ordained. In this context, Pseudo-Dionysius’ understanding of hierarchy and Christian ministry further highlighted the ecclesiological gulf between all baptised and the clergy. While such ancient reflections may seem irrelevant to modern Christians, the subtle effects are surprisingly contemporary. Consider the distinct liturgical dress for the clergy, as well as clerical collars, black clothes, titles such as ‘reverend’ (‘very reverend’, ‘right reverend’, ‘most reverend’, etc.), social deference, different moral expectations, etc. The inherited effects of this ancient theological ontology continue to distinguish the ordained from the rest of the Christian community.

An enduring positive inheritance for ordained ministry from this period to the present day is its capacity to adapt to vastly different cultural, societal, and geographical contexts. While there are important critiques on the developments of ordained ministry in these centuries – which continue in our own day – Christianity might have disappeared had it not been capable of rapid change.

5.1 Western medieval feudalism and ordained ministries

From the mid-tenth century, associated with the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto the Great (912–973), Western bishops and their dioceses were increasingly becoming integral parts of the medieval feudal system. Episcopal nominations – as distinct from ordination to the episcopate – were made by lay feudal lords (emperors, kings, dukes, etc.), rather than by canonical ecclesial elections. One of the strategic qualities of bishops in the feudal world was the fact that they were celibate, and thus unlike lay nobility, there would never be sons to inherit episcopal dioceses and associated feudal lands. The nobility also appointed clergy to the various parish churches within their domains.

Additionally, feudal rulers took a further unprecedented and contested role in the ordination of bishops by conferring signs of the episcopal office to new bishops, particularly the episcopal ring and pastoral staff, ecclesial symbols that the ordaining archbishop canonically and liturgically ought to have conferred. For ecclesiastical reformers, the practice of lay leaders conferring signs of ecclesial ministry on bishops was intolerable. The blending of civil and ecclesiastical leadership led to a crisis in the Western church known as the ‘investiture controversy’.

5.2 Developments in the Eastern churches

By contrast, with the rise of Islam from the early seventh century and the beginnings of the decline of the Byzantine Empire, Eastern Christians around the Eastern Mediterranean and their ordained leaders entered into long and protracted periods of hardship, persecution, and decline. Following the tradition of the first three centuries of the church, Eastern bishops, presbyters, and other ministers, as well as monks and nuns, were leading and caring for persecuted communities of Christians.

Monasteries moved from urban centres into the safety of the wilderness. The local parish churches, with their presbyters, deacons, and the minor orders were crucial to the survival of Christianity around the Middle East.

5.3 Ministries of ordained women

This period sees a significant decline in the role of women deacons, in both East and West. There had been a significant decline of deaconesses in the West beginning in sixth century; by the tenth century the deaconesses have disappeared, but not entirely forgotten. The tenth-century Romano-Germanic Pontifical contains the ordination liturgies of ministers from the minor orders to the major orders of subdeacon, deacon, and presbyter, as well as the consecration of bishop. Significantly, it also includes a liturgy for the ordination of a deaconess – ad diaconom faciendam – which includes the laying on of the bishop’s ands on the head of the female deacon, as well as the conferral of a deacon’s stole. The liturgy for the ordination of the female deacon is followed by a liturgy for the consecration of widows. The existence of both these liturgies for women in a ninth century Romano-Germanic Pontifical, when there is no evidence of either of these ever taking place, may reflect a studied liturgical conservatism and thus a living memory to the earlier centuries of the Western church when women were ordained to the orders of widow and deaconess.

By the end of this period, the ministry of the deaconesses had ceased in the Byzantine churches as well. Where the ministry of women deacons survived was in the Armenian Orthodox Church, which was outside the Byzantine empire.

5.4 What did Christian ministers do in this period?

Again, new cultural and political developments redefined the social and political roles of ordained ministries in East and West. In the West the clergy were increasingly enmeshed in the feudal structures, while in the East the clergy were leading their communities in contexts of persecution and instability.

In both East and West, parish communities were led by presbyters who presided at the rites of Christian initiation, the eucharist, and the pastoral rites of the churches. Bishops continued to lead their dioceses.

In the West, Christianity was expanding westward and northwards, with missionary bishops, priests, and monastic communities leading the way, such as Patrick (mid-fifth century to mid-sixth century), Willibrord (c. 658–739) and Willehad (730–789). The brothers Cyril (c. 827–885) and Methodius (c. 815–885) were both accomplished Eastern theologians, as well evangelists to the Slavic peoples; Methodius was an archbishop and Cyril a presbyter.

Ordained ministers were the primary theologians in this era. Along with the Western episcopal theologians of this period, such as Hincmar of of Reims (806–882) or Gerbert of Aurillac – later Pope Sylvester II – (c. 946–1003), significant presbyters were theologians, such as the Anglo-Saxon Bede the Venerable (c. 672–735), and the Frankish theologians Paschasius Radbertus (785–865) and Ratramnus (800–868). The leading theologian of the Carolingian Renaissance was Alcuin of York (c.735–804), a deacon and later Abbot of Marmoutier Abbey.

The significant Eastern theologians in this period were the ordained. Among the presbyters who were theologians are John of Damascus (c. 675–749), a monk. Theodore the Studite (759–826) was a monastic presbyter as well. John Scholasticus (c. 503–579), a noted canonist and theologian, was Patriarch of Constantinople. Photios the Great (c. 810–893), the premier Byzantine scholar of the ninth century, was for most of that period a lay person until his tumultuous tenure as Patriarch of Constantinople from 858 as well as his direct ordination to the episcopate without any intervening ordinations.

5.5 Summary

This period does not see significant developments in the structures and theology of ordained ministry in either East or West. How ordained are deployed in new contexts is significant, between the relationships of Christian ministers to the emerging feudal structures in the West, and the roles of clergy in the East, especially where Christian communities were living under Islamic rule.

The threefold ministries of bishop, presbyter, and deacon are common to both parts of the church, East and West. There remained differences in the number of minor orders, but no serious disputes on this topic. There were, however, disputes about clerical hair. For instance, the monastic tonsure was different in East and West. Clergy in the West were expected to be clean shaven, while their Eastern counterparts were not. A significant development in this period is the decline of the diaconate of women in both East and West.

6.1 The Eastern churches under the Ottomans

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean had become Muslim territories, with the Eastern Christians a significant and persecuted community. Under Ottoman rule, the Eastern churches acquired some level of security within the Ottoman Empire as an autonomous self-governing religious community styled a ‘millet’, which existed from 1300 to 1923. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Patriarchof Constantinople and became the religious and administrative ruler of the Byzantine churches, styled the ‘Greek Orthodox nation’ which encompassed all the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Empire. It provided some protection, and some autonomy within what was otherwise hostile political context. While the oppressive millet system bears no relationship to the feudal context of the Western church, like feudalism it conferred a certain civil status on all Eastern clergy, especially the archbishops and bishops.

6.2 Theological developments on the episcopate and presbyterate

From the second-century Apostolic Tradition onwards, an increasingly significant image for the ministry of the bishop was drawn from the imagery of the Levitical priesthood, of which Christ is the High Priest, following from the Letter to the Hebrews. As the eucharist became primarily understood as a sacrifice, its celebrant – the bishop then later the presbyter – became primarily understood as a sacerdos or ‘priest’.

In late Western medieval sacramental theology, however, the ‘priestly’ or sacerdotal celebrant was no longer identified with the episcopate, but the with presbyterate. Bishops were understood as sacerdotal or ‘priestly’ only because of their earlier ordinations as presbyters. While the different minor and major orders of the church were increasingly described in relationship to the eucharist, the episcopate was largely understood in relationship to leadership and governance within an ongoing feudal context. It was an open theological question whether the episcopate was even part of holy order in the way that the presbyterate was, as the episcopate was not primarily directed to eucharistic presidency, but to governance. From the Western medieval ordination rites until the reforms following the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, the liturgy for consecration of a bishop was not located with ordinations of presbyters, deacons, and the other ministries, but rather in rites for the installations of abbots and abbesses, the coronation of monarchs, etc.

The Western medieval theology of the episcopate had further consequences. For example, the three-fold major orders became presbyter, deacon, and subdeacon, with the four minor orders of acolyte, exorcists, lector, and doorkeeper. Significantly, the subdiaconate was moved from minor order to a major order, thus maintaining the numeric threefold major orders. Given that sacramentally there was no distinction between a Western bishop and a presbyter, there are instances in the late medieval church of monastic presbyter-abbots who, with papal permission, ordaining monks in their monasteries as subdeacons, deacons, and presbyters.

The Western identification of the presbyter as the primary sacerdotal or ‘priestly’ minister stands in contrast to ongoing Eastern and the earlier Western patristic and early medieval theology of ministry. In the Eastern church’s theology of ministry, the bishop remained the primary sacerdotal/hierarchic minister, with the presbyters understood as sacerdotal derivatively.

6.3 Ministries of ordained women

There are relatively few deaconesses mentioned in the Western sources, but enough to signal that a diaconate for women existed in at least the memory of the medieval church until the twelfth century.

By the eleventh century, the Byzantine churches had ceased ordaining women to the diaconate altogether. By contrast, in the Armenian Apostolic Church, there is clear evidence of the ordination of monastic women to the sub-diaconate and to the diaconate during the period, including the laying-on-of-hands and the conferral of a stole.

6.4 What did these ministers do?

In the Western and Eastern churches, archbishops and bishops were significant leaders within feudal societies and within the Ottoman millet system. Within their dioceses they ordained presbyters, deacons, subdeacons, and those in the minor orders. They continued to preside at the baptism and the eucharist, but in a limited way in comparison with parish presbyters. Western bishops continued to confer the sacrament of confirmation, when able to visit towns and villages. By contrast, for centuries Eastern presbyters presided at the entire rite of initiation.

Parish presbyters remained the primary ordained ministers in the lives of most people in this period, baptising newborn babies, celebrating the eucharist, absolving sinners, burying the dead, and preaching to the best of their abilities, etc.

The roles of presbyters in the monasteries was significant, as the Eucharist was celebrated every day, in addition to Sundays and feast days. The monastic communities included deacons, subdeacons, and those in the minor orders.

The role of presbyters in the medieval church was enhanced following the establishment of the mendicant orders that emerged from the early thirteenth century, specifically the Dominican and Franciscan friars. The mission and preaching of the mendicant presbyters were significant in the lives of ordinary Western Christians, much to the consternation of the parish clergy.

The mendicant orders emerged at around the same time as the new medieval universities were being established, where they played pivotal roles as theologians, such as the Franciscan Bonaventure (1121–1274), the Dominican Albertus Magnus, later Bishop of Regensburg (c. 1200–1280), the Franciscan John Duns Scotus (1265–1308), the Franciscan William of Ockham (1287–1347), the Franciscan Roger Bacon (1220–1292), and the pre-eminent medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a Dominican.

The Western church in this era also produced exception theologians who were not friars, such Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033–1109), Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris (1096–1160), Ivo, Bishop of Chartres (c. 1040–1142), Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (1150–1228), and Jan Hus, a presbyter and late medieval reformer (1369–1415).

The Eastern church in this period has significant ordained theologians. If the Western theologians were predominantly mendicants and presbyters, the significant Eastern theologians were monastic and episcopal. John XI Beckos (c. 1225–1296) was a Patriarch of Constantinople. Gregory Palamas (c. 1296–1359) was a monk later Archbishop of Thessaloniki. Gennadios Scholaris (1400–c. 1473) was Patriarch of Constantinople. Mark of Ephesus (1392–1444) was the Archbishop of Ephesus.

Like the Eastern church, the Western church knew married parish priests for centuries. From the early thirteenth century, however, monastic celibacy was imposed on Western parish clergy. In part this was to deal with certain abuses, such as the sons of priests inheriting parishes, especially in a feudal context. It was also linked with priestly purity in relationship to eucharistic presidency.

6.5 Summary

This period witnesses significant changes in Western theology and deployment of ordained ministries. Of note is the shift from understanding the episcopate as the primary sacerdotal/‘priestly’ minister to the presbyterate; the presbyter became the primary sacerdos or ‘priest’. This development led to the late medieval speculation as to whether a bishop was part of holy order at all. The identification of the subdiaconate as a major order preserved a numeric three-fold ministry, but is otherwise an innovation. By the late medieval period, the Western and Eastern churches no longer claim to share a common theology of ordained ministers.

Theological and sacramental affirmations of the eucharist as primarily a sacrifice, and its presider as a sacerdotal minister sets the agenda of much of the Reformation understandings of ordained ministries. The late Western medieval emphasis on the presbyterate would inform the reforms of Christian ministry in the sixteenth-century Reformation movements in a decidedly ‘presbyterian’ direction.

7.1 The Lutheran Reformation

Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar and presbyter before the Reformation that bears his name began in 1517. His theological starting point, that salvation is a gift of God to be received by faith alone, had implications for all aspects of Christian life, including ordained ministries.

For Luther anything that appeared to be a ‘work’ or human effort to effect salvation was rejected. Thus, the inherited understanding of the eucharist as a sacrifice offered for human salvation was rejected as a ‘work’. Consequently, if the Eucharist may not be understood as sacrificial, then its celebrant cannot in any way be understood as sacerdotal. This pivotal insight would be shared by other Reformation traditions, and marked a departure from the inherited Western sacramental theology of both the eucharist and ordination.

In terms of a sacerdotal understanding of ministry, Luther identified the theological character or quality of priesthood/sacerdos not with presbyters or bishops, but with all the baptised. Thus, the clergy are not given a sacramental quality or character in ordination that is not already given to every Christian in baptism. For Luther, ordination was not a sacrament, although formal appointment to office included election, examination, and liturgical prayer and the laying-on-of-hands; for Luther all of these were laudable apostolic customs.

A direction quickly reflected in all the Reformation traditions was the abolishment of mandatory clerical celibacy. A sign of support for the Reformation was for pastors to be married, a reason for Luther’s own decision to be married. Another sign of support for the Reformation is seen in the contemporary portraits of reformed clergy across the spectrum, before and after the reforms, namely propensity for the clergy to be bearded in defiance of the medieval practice that clergy be clean-shaven and tonsured.

In Germany no pre-Reformation bishops were willing to support the Reformation, and thus did not ordain clergy for the newly reformed churches. As a late-medieval thinker, Luther would have agreed that sacramentally there was no distinction between bishops and presbyters. Further, Luther knew of the late-medieval ordinations conferred by abbots who were presbyters. Thus, Luther had no theological difficulty to support the practice of presbyters ordaining new pastors for the Lutheran communities. Oversight of the work of the pastors at a regional level was exercised by superintendents. Despite the etymological correspondence between the Latin superintendens and the Greek episcopos, Lutheran superintendents were not a different order of ministry, nor were they understood to be the successors of the medieval bishops.

The Lutheran Reformation in some countries, however, did retain the ministries of bishops and presbyters in continuity with the medieval bishops, especially where the Reformation was a more conservative one, such as the Church of Sweden. Within the Lutheran tradition from the beginning, there have been diverse patterns of ordained ministries, reflected today in the communion of churches in the Lutheran World Federation.

7.2 Anabaptists

The emerging Anabaptist movements from the early 1520s in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands lived in contexts of persecution from other churches, including those also shaped by the Reformation. These small communities were often without church buildings. Anabaptists rejected a paid, trained, and professional clergy. Anabaptist leaders, styled as ministers, elders, shepherds, or bishops, earned their living like everyone else in the community.

Among the Anabaptist movements, from the sixteenth century the Mennonite tradition has known various patterns of ministry, such as bishops/elders, preachers, deacons and deaconesses, and elders. There were diverse ways of appointing ministers, such as simple election, or appointment by liturgical prayer with the laying-on-of-hands.

In the Netherlands there is evidence of Mennonite women in the late sixteenth century serving the sick and the poor as deaconesses. Many of these deaconesses lived in community. Like the women deacons of the early church, their ministry was to women and children. With the full immersion of adult candidates for baptism, again deaconesses had a role in the baptisms of women.

7.3 The Genevan Reformation

From 1536, the Genevan Reformation gave rise to the family of churches known as ‘Reformed’. This tradition owes its particular direction to the teaching of John Calvin, a lay person. Calvin’s starting point on ministry was not the inherited seven-fold medieval orders and bishops, but rather Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 4.11. ‘He himself granted that some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry […]’ (NRSVue). The permanent biblical ministries for Calvin were the pastors and teachers, which include the functions of the apostles, prophets, and evangelists. Calvin understood the New Testament titles of bishop, pastor, and minister to refer to a single ministry of word and sacrament. Calvin later added two lay ministries, the elders who took part in governance, and deacons who engaged in charitable work, and assisted the pastors. With Luther, Calvin rejected eucharistic sacrifice, and thus any sacerdotal or priestly understanding of ordained ministries, who presided at the Lord’s Supper. One of the contributions of the Calvinist reforms on ministry was the stress on academic theology as a preparation for ordination to a ministry of preaching and teaching.

The four-fold ordering of ministries – pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons – became one of the most enduring and influential of the Reformation far beyond Geneva. By contrast, in Scotland, John Knox, a disciple of Calvin, introduced a revised ordering of ministries of the newly reformed Church of Scotland that departed from the Genevan model significantly. The 1560 Scottish Book of Discipline sets out a revised Reformed model: superintendents, ministers, doctors, elders, and deacons. Superintendents were regional ministers. In Hungary, however, for contextual reasons arising from located in the Ottoman Empire, the Reformed Church has retained the office of bishop from the sixteenth century to the present.

Like the Lutheran churches, the churches shaped by John Calvin and the Genevan reformation have from the sixteenth century lived with different patterns of ministry, reflected today in the churches that belong to the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

7.4 The Council of Trent

While the Council of Trent (1545–1563) was the principal vehicle of the so-called Counter-Reformation, it was very much an agent of reform and renewal for the modern Roman Catholic Church. A significant instance of the Council’s reform agenda is seen in the area of ordained ministry.

The Twenty-third session of the Council dealt with the sacrament of orders. It affirmed the medieval understanding of the presbyterate as the fundamental sacerdotal order. It affirmed sequential ordination through the minor and major ministries, with the medieval ordering of presbyter, deacon, subdeacon, identified by the Council as ‘from the very beginning of the church’. It condemned the loss of the major and minor orders in the churches shaped by the Reformation.

A significant reform of Christian ministry by the Council was around the formation of presbyters. Trent provided a new timetable for sequential ordination through the minor orders to the diaconate as testing, linked with the curriculum of the newly created seminaries for the formation and academic training of clergy within all dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Council accented the place of preaching in the life of the church. It further identifies preaching as the primary task of bishops.

7.5 The Church of England

The initial reforms that began in England after the death of Henry VIII in 1547 were relatively conservative. Consequently, its reforms were a source of conflict between English traditionalists and the so-called Puritans who insisted on a more thorough reform along the lines of Calvin’s Geneva. As the English Reformation evolved, the result in the Church of England was something of a compromise, or a ‘middle way’, especially evident in the reforms of Christian ministry.

In its reformation, the Church of England restored and maintained the three-fold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, as warranted in Scripture. The English reformers ensured that the historic succession of bishops from the medieval episcopate to the reformed Church of England was maintained. The subdiaconate and the minor orders were abolished, although for pastoral reasons the ministry of lector or reader was retained. Like the continental reforms on ministry, mandatory clerical celibacy was abolished, and the married parish priest became normative.

While late medieval understandings of eucharistic sacrifice were rejected by the English reformers, the eucharistic rite in the various editions of The Book of Common Prayer (1549, 1552, 1559, 1662, and beyond) retained a limited use of sacrificial language. For the second order of ministry, the drafters of The Book of Common Prayer used the common English contraction of the Latin presbyter – priest – for the name of the second order of ministry, rather than pastor, elder, or minister in spite of contemporary arguments that the word ‘priest’ suggested a sacrifice, regardless of its etymological roots in the biblical ‘presbyter’. The first usage of the the word ‘priest’ in an authorised liturgy was in The Book of Common Prayer.

In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Reformed pastors fleeing from Europe to the Church of England could function as a priest with a bishop’s permission; by contrast, English Reformed clergy within England could not.

In the aftermath of the English Civil War (1642–1651), the Church of England – with its bishops, priests, and deacons, and the Book of Common Prayer – was abolished by Parliament. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Church of England was also restored, with its bishops, priests, and deacons. In 1660 only nine bishops were still alive after the Civil War and Commonwealth to ordain new bishops, who in turn ordained new deacons and priests.

A revision was inserted in the ordination rites of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer stating that only episcopally ordained clergy could serve in the restored Church of England. Consequently, thousands of non-episcopally ordained pastors were ejected from their parishes at the Restoration, ushering in a new expression of Christian disunity. Hence, the non-mutual recognition of ministries became a significant church-dividing issue within British Christianity, and was exported across the globe in the wake of British imperialism.

The Church of England (with the Church of Ireland, the Scottish Episcopal Church, and later the Church in Wales) evolved into a global communion of regional churches from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Fundamental to the communion between the dioceses of the Anglican Communion across the world has been the mutual recognition of three-fold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, and the eucharistic communion of the bishops with the See and Archbishop of Canterbury.

7.6 Methodism

The Methodist tradition began in the 1730s as a renewal movement within the Church of England, led by John Wesley, a Church of England priest. Gradually the Methodist movement became a distinct church, with its own patterns of ministry. In England, Methodist leadership was exercised by conferences and their presidents, and locally by the ministry of elders.

When the movement spread to the American colonies in 1784 a new model of Methodist ministry evolved, that of superintendents and elders. As a priest of the Church of England, John Wesley ordained the first superintendents, later called bishops, for the American church. This development represents another Western expression of episcopal ministry. Methodism has evolved from its beginnings into a family of churches with different patterns of ministry, which is a characteristic of the Methodist World Conference today.

7.7 Ministries of ordained women

A recovery of women’s ministries in the churches shaped by the Reformation began with the Mennonite communities in the Netherlands in the late sixteenth century, especially the aforementioned recovery of the office of deaconess. These ministries of Anabaptist women continued well into the twentieth century, and thrived as Anabaptist communities from Europe arrived in North America. The communities of deaconesses were often dubbed as ‘Mennonite nuns’.

From the mid-nineteenth century there was a recovery of ministries of women by other churches shaped by the Reformation, in particular a recovery of the order of deaconesses. The first were the German Lutheran deaconesses, founded at Kaiserwerth in 1836. These deaconesses engaged in three kinds of ministry: care of the sick and the poor, teaching, and parish ministry. They were active in Germany, but also in the German missions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Kaiserwerth model of deaconesses inspired other churches shaped by the Reformation to restore deaconesses, such as the Nordic Lutheran churches, the Reformed churches in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and beyond, as well as Anglican and Methodist churches, initially in the United Kingdom and North America. Some churches ordained women as deaconesses in liturgies that were indistinguishable from the ordination of male deacons; other churches did not consider the appointment of a deaconess as ordination. The deaconess movement was not only a significant recovery of a ministry for women, but also a significant recovery of diakonia as a missiological and ecclesiological imperative.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the ordinations of women to ministries of word and sacrament began in some of the churches shaped by the Reformation. American Methodists began to ordain women to this ministry in 1880. Presbyterians in the USA began to ordain women in 1893.

7.8 Nineteenth and early-twentieth century bilateral conversations on ministry

The Prussian Union of Churches brought together the Lutheran and Reformed communities into a single state church in 1817, with a common liturgy. Effectively, Lutheran and Reformed ministries in Prussia were reconciled by the creation of the new church.

In the late nineteenth century, there were informal discussions between some English Anglicans and some Roman Catholics about mutual recognition of ministry. The result was a formal decision of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1896 apostolic letter of Pope Leo XII, Apostolicae curae, which declared that all Anglican ordinations from the sixteenth century were ‘absolutely null and utterly void’.

While this instance of one church formally denouncing the ordinations of another was unique, in practice it occurred regularly between the churches, particularly by episcopal towards non-episcopal churches. For example, from the 1662 Ordinal in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer excludes non-episcopal ministers from serving in Anglican churches, which was in effect a non-recognition of presbyteral ordination.

The Church of Sweden – a Lutheran church which retained bishops at the Reformation – and the Church of England began to explore the possibility of a full communion agreement in the early twentieth century, leading to a commission of the two churches which met in 1909. There was agreement on the mutual recognition of one another’s bishops. A sticking point was the place of the diaconate, which no longer existed in the Swedish church, but was a mandated order leading to priestly and episcopal ordination for Anglicans. In the end it was regarded as a point of difference rather than a disagreement.

7.9 What did Christian ministers do in this period?

Despite the tremendous change and diversity that resulted from the Reformation, including diverse theologies of ministry and sacraments, Christian ministers from the sixteenth century onward continued to serve within their parishes or congregations the traditions begun by the bishops and deacons/presbyters from the earliest house churches: leading local Christian communities, preaching and teaching the Gospel, presiding at baptism and the eucharist, caring for the sick, the dying, and the bereaved. Despite the best intentions of the sixteenth century reformers, the eucharist was not celebrated weekly, but normally four times a year.

A significant change at the Reformation – and thus for signifcant parts of Western Christianity – was the recovery of married clergy, and an emerging role of the spouse and family of a Christian minister, which had never ceased in Eastern Christianity.

One of the common insights of the wider Western Reformation was the need of thorough academic formation for ordained ministers, both in the Roman Catholic Church as well as in the churches shaped by the Reformation. This was the era of the printing press – the new information technology – resulting in new and heightened levels of literacy that made such academic study of theology possible at such a scale. These developments signalled a different kind of preparation for ministry from that of the late medieval church, whether the seminary model initiated by the Council of Trent, or the university models of the churches shaped by the Reformation.

In the churches shaped by the Reformation, the Bible was being translated into the various European languages, with a fresh appreciation of the Hebrew Bible as well as the Greek New Testament, rather than the inherited Latin Bible. The place of the Bible for teaching and preaching offered unparalleled levels of biblical literacy for Christian ministers and their communities.

Roman Catholic ministry continued in the same ways in parish settings. The place of the weekly Sunday Eucharist was more fundamental to Roman Catholic communities than those of the Reformation. New religious orders within the Roman Catholic Church gave wider scope to ordained ministry, e.g. the work of presbyters of the Society of Jesus, the Capuchin Friars, the Oratory of St Philip of Neri, the Augustinian Recollects, etc.

The beginnings of European colonialism coincided with the divisions of churches of Europe, now exported around the world. With the expansion of European Christianity, the clergy of the divided European churches became missionaries and evangelisers, as both pastoral care leaders to colonial communities, and evangelisers to Indigenous communities around the world, too often with disastrous effect. A related issue has been the collusion of the churches and their ministers around enslaved peoples, particularly from West Africa to the Americas.

The theologians from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century were largely ordained ministers amongst the churches shaped by the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Orthodox Church.

Amongst the churches shaped by the Reformation, Martin Luther was a former priest and later pastor (1483–1546). By contrast, Philip Melencthon (1497–1560), one of the theological architects of the Reformation, was a layperson. Significant ordained theologians of the Lutheran tradition in this period are Andreas Osiander, priest and later pastor (1491–1556), Stephan Praetorius, pastor (1536–1603), and Philipp Spener (1635–1705), who inspired the Pietist movement. Jesper Svedberg was a Swedish bishop (1653–1735). A significant nineteenth century Lutheran theologian was Peter Christian Kierkegaard, a Danish bishop (1805-1888).

Significantly, John Calvin, like Philip Melencthon, was never ordained. Subsequent Reformed theologians have been pastors, such as Martin Bucer (1489–1551), Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575 CE), John Knox (1514–1572), Richard Baxter (1615–1691 CE), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1838).

From the Anglican theological tradition, Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) was Archbishop of Canterbury. The premier theologian of the Elizabethan era was Richard Hooker, a priest (1554–1600). The Caroline Divines, influential theologians of the seventeenth century, included a number of bishops, such as Lancelot Andrews (1555–1626) and John Cosin (1594–1672). By contrast, the nineteenth-century theologians of the Oxford Movement tended to be priests, such as John Keble (1792–1866) and Edward Pusey (1800–1882).

Methodist ministers in this era were active as theologians, including John Wesley (1703–1791), George Whitefield (1714–1770), and Thomas co*ke (1747–1814), who was first Methodist bishop in the USA. Helenor M. Davisson, the first woman to be ordained deacon in the Methodist Church USA (1823), is noted among nineteenth century theologians.

The Tridentine and post-Tridentine theologians of the Roman Catholic Church were almost exclusively ordained, such as Desiderius Erasmus, priest (c.1466–1536), Gasparo Contorini Bishop of Belluna (1483–1542), Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury (1500–1558), Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Ghent (1510–1576), Robert Bellarmine SJ, Archbishop of Capra (1534–1621), and Luigi Novarini, Theatine priest (1594–1650). Much later, Nicolas Wiseman was a theologian and the first Archbishop of Westminster (1802–1865). Many of the Roman Catholic theologians in this era were ordained members of the new religious orders, especially from the Society of Jesus. Among the episcopal theologians who shaped the First Vatican Council (1869) were Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler (1811–1877), Marionite archbishop Boutros Boustani (1819–1899), and Federico Zinelli (1805–1879), who drafted the chapter on papal infallibility in Pastor aeternis.

While contemporary Orthodox theologians were largely episcopal, there were significant presbyter theologians, such as Paisius Wieliczkowski (1722–1794) and Gavrilo Stefanović (1680–1749). Among the episcopal theologians are Gabriel Severus, metropolitan of Philadelphia (c.1540–1616), Chrysanthus Notaras (c. 1655–1731), Patriarch of Jerusalem; Plato II (1737–1812), Metropolitan of Moscow; and Porphyrius Uspensky (1804–1885), auxiliary bishop of Chigirin.

7.10 Summary

The four centuries of this section are perhaps the most traumatic in terms of developments of Christian ministry. From the Reformation, a common ministry of word and sacrament was effectively lost in Western Europe, with further estrangement between Eastern and Western Christians. New and differing patterns and structures were established in the different churches shaped by the Reformation.

A consequence of the Reformation and the different theologies and structures of ordained ministries was the loss of a mutually recognised ordained ministry of leadership, word, and sacrament. The inability to recognise one another’s ministries was part of a larger inability of the churches to recognise in each other the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

A common reform across the divisions, was the deliberate training and forming of Christian ministers through the Roman Catholic seminaries and the universities and theological faculties of the churches shaped by the Reformation. New learning was exponentially supported by the printing press and the rise of literacy for Christian ministers and their congregations.

8.1 Ecumenical reflection on Christian ministry

The first Faith and Order World Conference was held in Lausanne in 1927, and included significant numbers of churches from around the world. While the Roman Catholic Church was absent, there was a high representation from both Orthodox churches and the churches shaped by the Reformation to identify and address the church-dividing issues around faith and order.

The issues around theology, doctrine, and the ‘faith’ of the Church were much easier to discuss, unlike the areas of the ‘ordering’ of the churches, particularly the theologies and structures of ministries.

8.2 Multilateral conversations on ordained ministries: United and Uniting Churches

While the first united church was achieved in Prussia in 1817 between Lutheran and Reformed churches, from the 1920s there were fresh impetuses for new united churches around the world arsing from the urgency for Christian unity inspired by the beginnings of the Ecumenical Movement. In different parts of the world, separated churches in the same region, invariably those shaped by the Reformation, came together to form new united churches. An issue was the mutual recognition of ministries. For the churches that took this step, especially the Presbyterian/Reformed, Congregational, and Methodist churches, recognition of one another’s ministries of word and sacrament was achieved. Anglican churches were often present at the beginning of such conversations, but were not able to take the next step around mutual recognition of ministries which did not include the historic episcopate.

Plans of union that included the historic episcopate and the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons were much easier for Anglican churches. The first – and iconic – example is the Church of South India (CSI), inaugurated in 1947 after decades of study and debate within the Anglican, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches in South India. The result was the new united church, which included the three-fold ministry and the historic episcopate. The bishops of the new church were elected and ordained from among the existing Anglican bishops and priests, and from the ordained ministers from Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches. There was a mutual recognition of one another’s ministries, and no re-ordination. Since 1948, the Church of South India has been a member of the World Association of Reformed Churches (later the World Communion of Reformed Churches), and the World Methodist Conference. While many Anglicans outside India hailed the achievement of the Church of South India, it was only recognised as a member church of the Anglican Communion in 1967, when all serving CSI presbyters and deacons had been ordained by bishops in the historic episcopate. The Church of South India remains the iconic example of the reconciliation of ministries.

8.3 Bilateral conversations on ordained ministries

Bilateral conversation between two separated churches also produced fruit. After years of cooperation and mutual goodwill with the Anglican Communion, in 1925 the Patriarchate of Constantinople declared that Anglican ordinations could be recognised on the same basis ‘as those of the Roman, Old Catholic, and Armenian Churches’. This recognition was not the fruit of ecumenical dialogue, but was an internal decision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and it did not lead to a full communion agreement.

The Church of Sweden and Church of England reached and agreement which led to full communion in 1922, based on the mutual recognition of one another’s ministries, particularly bishops in historic episcopal succession. By the same process the Church of England and the Church of Finland entered into full communion in 1934, followed by the Estonian and Latvian Lutheran churches in 1938. It was the mutual recognition of one another’s bishops and clergy that made possible these Anglican–Nordic Lutheran bilateral agreements of full communion.

After decades of conversation, the 1931 Bonn Agreement established a relationship of full communion between the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht and the Church of England, and later the Anglican Communion. The agreement was fifty years in the making, and hinged principally on the mutual recognition of the ‘validity’ of one another’s ordinations, and thus the interchangeability of ordained ministries.

8.4 Ministries of ordained women

Within the churches shaped by the Reformation, a significant development in the twentieth century was the ordination of women to ministries of word and sacrament, as distinct from the ministries of deaconesses. For example, the United Church of Canada ordained the first woman as a minister of word and sacrament in 1936. Nordic Lutherans followed suit from the late 1940s. The Church of Scotland began to ordain women in 1949, and the Church of Sweden ordained the first female priest in 1958.

There was a significant instance of the ordination of a woman as an Anglican priest during the Second World War. As an emergency measure during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the Anglican bishop in Hong Kong ordained a deaconess, Florence Li Tim-Oi, to the priesthood to care for Anglicans in Macau in 1944. The subsequent meeting of the Lambeth Conference of bishops in 1948 condemned this development, as ‘against the tradition and order and would gravely affect the internal and external relations of the Anglican Communion’ (Res.113).

Within Eastern Christianity in the early twentieth century, there were instances of the recovery of deaconesses. Nectarios of Pentapolis (1846–1920), for instance, ordained two women as deaconesses in 1911. Melitios Metaxakis (1871–1935), later Ecumenical Patriarch, is reported to have ordained deaconesses. These ordinations, however significant, remain isolated instances.

Again, the Armenian Apostolic Church has had a continuous female diaconate since antiquity, within women’s monasteries, but limited to Armenia, not its diaspora.

8.5 What did Christian ministers do in this period?

Christians in this era would have encountered ordained ministry in their local congregational or parish contexts. The ordained leaders led their communities in worship, especially Christian initiation, the eucharist and other regular liturgical prayer. They taught and preached, and offered pastoral care to the sick and the bereaved.

Ordained ministers from different church traditions served as chaplains during the two World Wars and other theatres of war. Clergy were also chaplains in hospitals, schools, and other settings.

Ordained ministers continue to be the primary theologians at this time: Karl Barth from the Reformed tradition was a pastor (1886–1968), Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor (1906–1945), Rudolph Bultmann was a Lutheran biblical scholar (1884–1976), Reinhold Niebuhr was a pastor and Reformed theologian (1892–1971). From the Anglican theological tradition, George Bell was a bishop (1883–1958), Frank Leslie Cross (1900–1968) was a priest, as was Austin Ferrer (1904–1929). William Temple was Archbishop of Canterbury (1881–1944).

Significant Roman Catholic theologians in this period were priests rather than bishops, such as Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, a Dominican (1877–1964); Pierre Teihard de Chardin (1881–1955); Romano Guardini (1885–1968); Ronald Knox (1888–1957); Charles Journet (1891–1975), and Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and priest (1915–1968).

Priests are among the significant Orthodox theologians of this period, such as Serge Bulgakov (1871–1944), Gala Galaction, (1879–1961), Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), and Nikolay Afanasiev, (1894–1966).

8.6 Summary

As in the previous eras, most ordained ministers continued to serve and lead parish or congregational communities. They were also signifcant teachers and theologians in this era. Many ordained ministers were beginning to serve as chaplains in hospitals, to members of the military, and in other arenas beyond the parishes and congregations.

Within the first half the twentieth century, the churches shaped by the Reformation were ordaining women to the presbyteral ministries of word and sacrament.

Theologies and structures of ministry were on the agenda in the early years of the Ecumenical Movement, in an effort to reconcile and recognize one another’s ministries as part of the the journey towards Christian unity.

9.1 Roman Catholic reforms on ministry

The Second Vatican Council launched a significant renewal and reform of ordained ministries that were enacted in 1972 in the apostolic letter of Pope Paul VI, Ministeria Quaedam. The ancient minor orders of doorkeeper, exorcist, and subdeacon were abolished, with only the lector/reader and the acolyte remaining; the major orders were restored to the pre-medieval triad of bishop, presbyter and deacon. Further, the Council restored the episcopate as the primary sacerdotal ministry, which is shared with the presbyters, and not the other way around.

In the spirit of the Decree on Ecumenism, the Roman Catholic Church entered fully into the Ecumenical Movement, including full membership from 1968 on the multilateral table of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order. Although the Roman Catholic Church is not an official member of the WCC, it works closely with the Council at all levels.

The Roman Catholic Church also committed itself to resolve its historic disagreements with other Christian churches – those shaped by the Reformation, as well as with the various families of Orthodox churches, both Eastern and Oriental. The way forward was through a series of bilateral theological dialogues with the other global Christian communion, which inevitably included issues around ministries. The churches who were in dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church soon found themselves in bilateral theological dialogues with one another. Ordained ministries has been on the agenda of all the bilateral dialogues.

9.2 Ministries of ordained women

The deaconess movement in the churches shaped by the Reformation declined from the mid-twentieth century due to a variety factors, but especially the ordination of women as ministers, pastors, priests, and bishops. From the 1960s the ordination of women has been widely accepted in the churches of the Reformed, Methodist, Congregationalist, Lutheran, United and Uniting churches, and some Evangelical and Anabaptist churches. Churches of the Anglican Communion began to ordained women to the diaconate and presbyterate on varying timelines from the 1970s, and as bishops from the late 1980s. The Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht have ordained women to the diaconate and the presbyterate, but not yet to the episcopate. At the same time it is important to acknowledge disagreements, and indeed, divisions within these same church families on ordination of women. Significant conservative Protestant and Evangelical churches have also not admitted women to ordained ministries.

The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1976 declaration, Inter Insigniores, effectively closed the question of the ordination of women as bishops and priests in the Roman Catholic Church, followed by Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, stating that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood. Roman Catholic dialogue with other Western churches on historic church-dividing issues on ordained ministries has inevitably included discussion on the ordination of women.

Under the pontificate of Pope Francis, the question of the ordination of women to the diaconate has been raised at the highest levels, particularly through two commissions to explore the possibility of female deacons in 2016 and 2020. To date, nothing has changed. The supporting historical and theological work produced by scholars such as Dr Phyllis Zagano remain comprehensive resources, such as her 2016 collection, Women Deacons: Essays with Answers.

In the Orthodox Church, conversations on the ordination of women to the diaconate have borne fruit. The international meetings of Orthodox women in 1976 and 1984 called for conversations about the ordination of deaconesses. The Inter-Orthodox Consultation meeting in Rhodes in 1988 supported the restoration of the female diaconate. In recent years there have been limited instances of monastic women being ordained as deaconesses. For instance, Archbishop Christodoulas, when he was Metropolitan of Volos, ordained a nun as a deaconess 1986. In 2006 the Patriarch of Alexandria announced his decision to ordain women to the diaconate. In 2017 he ordained five deaconesses in Congo, with more deaconesses in 2018 in Sierra Leone. In 2008, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece announced its decision to restore the diaconate to women. There are hopes that the diaconate for women will be revived in the Orthodox Church more widely, with promotion and support of organisations such as the St Phoebe Centre for the Deaconess, as well as St Catherine’s Vision, both in the USA.

Within Orthodox theological circles, there has also been theological reflection on the ordination of women to the priesthood. An important instance is the 2020 publication, Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice.

As noted above, the Armenian Apostolic Church has had a continuous female diaconate since antiquity, but limited to monastic women. In September 2017, however, the Armenian Archbishop of Tehran ordained a deaconess who was not a nun, but a medical doctor, to serve as a ‘parish’ deacon.

9.3 The Commission on Faith and Order (WCC)

The issue of ordained ministry has long been on the agenda of the Commission on Faith and Order. The two convergence texts of Faith and Order, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM), and The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV), treat ordained ministries.

BEM’s section on Ministry is grounded on its previous sections on Baptism and the Eucharist. It begins with an ecclesiological reflection on the calling of the whole people of God. BEM states that the mission of the church requires people who are publicly and permanently responsible for pointing to the community’s dependence on Jesus. Such ministers provide a multiplicity of gifts, are a focus of unity, and are thus constitutive for the life and witness of the church (M #8). Just as Christ appointed apostles, Christ continues to choose and call Christians to ministry. They are charged with the responsibility to assemble and build up the body of Christ, in which the eucharist is the visible focus of the communion between Christ and the church.

BEM reflects an ecumenical convergence on the Reformation disagreement on the sacerdotal or ‘priestly’ understanding of ordained ministry. It affirms the unique priesthood of Christ, and then the derivative priesthood of the church as a whole. From this ecclesiological principle, BEM affirms that the priesthood of the ordained is related to both the priesthood of Christ and of the priesthood of the church. Thus, it poses, ordained ministers ‘…may appropriately be called priests because they fulfil a particular priestly service by strengthening and building up the royal and prophetic priesthood of the faithful’ (M #17).

BEM addresses the structures of ordained ministry, and commends to the churches the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons as an expression of the unity the churches seek, as well as a means for achieving it. (M #21). BEM goes on to reflect on the concept of episkopé, associated first with the ministry of the apostles, and then to bishops. BEM then identifies episkopé as an ecclesiological category:

The Church as the Body of Christ and the eschatological people of God constituted by the Holy Spirit through a diversity of gifts or ministries. Among these gifts a ministry of episkope is necessary to express and safeguard the unity of the body. Every church needs this ministry of unity in some form in order to be the Church of God, the one body of Christ, a sign of the unity of all in the Kingdom’. (M #23)

BEM identifies all ministries, but particularly ministries of episkopé, as ‘personal’, ‘collegial’, and ‘communal’ (M #26). This ecumenical usage of episkopé provided new language to describe ordained leadership in the churches that went beyond the binary categories of episcopal/non-episcopal. BEM challenges the churches to recognise that the practise of the succession of bishops is a way to recognise a continuity in apostolic faith, worship, mission, and episkopé in churches that have not retained the historic episcopate. Likewise, churches that do not have bishops in their polity are encouraged to recognise that episkopé is already being exercised in different ways in their communities.

On the succession of the apostolic tradition, BEM draws attention to apostolic faith, the proclamation and fresh interpretation of the Gospel, the celebrations of baptism and the eucharist, the transmission of ministry, communion in prayer, love and suffering, service to the sick and the needy, and the unity among the local churches (M #34).

On the issue of apostolic succession of ministers, BEM speaks of the ‘succession in apostolic tradition’, which is found in the apostolic tradition of the church as a whole; a succession of ministry is a powerful expression of the continuity of the church as a whole (M #35).

BEM underlines the necessity of a mutual recognition of ordained ministries for the unity of the church, and is clear that such mutual recognition will require changes:

In order to advance towards the mutual recognition of ministries, deliberate efforts are required. All churches need to examine the forms of ordained ministry and the degree to which the churches are faithful to its original intentions. Churches must be prepared to renew their understanding and practice of the ordained ministry’. (M. #51)

BEM addresses the ministries of women and men in the church, and affirms:

Where Christ is present, human barriers are being broken […] A deeper understanding of the comprehensiveness of ministry which reflects the interdependence of men and women needs to be more widely manifested in the life of the Church (M #18).

This inclusive statement is directed, however, to ministries arising from baptism. On the ordination of women BEM notes that ‘the churches draw different conclusions as to the admission of women to the ordained ministry’ (M #18). The lengthy commentary on the ordination of women concludes: ‘The discussion of the practical and theological questions within the various churches and Christian traditions should be complemented by joint study and reflection within the ecumenical fellowship of all churches (Commentary 18, p. 25).

Unlike the sections on Baptism and Eucharist, BEM’s treatment on ministry received the most mixed reception in the official responses of the churches. However, where BEM’s work on ‘Ministry’ was most conspicuously received was in the churches’ official global and regional bilateral dialogues, where it bore much fruit. BEM’s teaching on ministry, especially in the historical episcopate, shaped the 1992 Porvoo full communion agreement between the Anglican churches in the British Isles and Ireland, and the Nordic Lutheran churches. The agreements between Lutherans and Anglicans/Episcopalians in the USA (1999) and Canada (2001) were likewise dependent on BEM.

Faith and Order’s 2013 convergence statement, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV), is an ecclesiological text that treats ordained ministries within this particular context. Published 20 years after BEM, TCTCV harvests the responses to BEM on ministry, as well as the insights of the international bilateral agreements since 1982, especially as they pertain to ecumenical and ecclesiological issues on ministry, including the influence of BEM itself. The Commission on Faith and Order observes:

Ecumenical dialogue has repeatedly shown that issues related to ordained ministry constitute challenging obstacles on the path to unity. If differences such as those relating to the priesthood of the ordained prohibit full unity, it must continue to be an urgent priority for the churches to discover how they can be overcome (TCTCV #45, p. 26)

TCTCV takes the reflection on the ministry of oversight/episkopé to new directions for Faith and Order, namely towards a universal ministry of primacy associated with the Bishop of Rome (TCTCV #55, #56, #57, pp. 31–32). And so Faith and Order asks,

If, according to the will of Christ, current divisions are overcome, how might a ministry that fosters and promotes the unity of the Church at the universal level be understood and exercised? (TCTCV #57, p. 32)

9.4 The Leuenberg Agreement (1973)

Working closely with the Commission on Faith and Order was a series of conversations in Europe between the Lutheran, Reformed, United, and Methodist churches, with the pre-Reformation Waldensians and the Czeck Brethren, to establish a full communion agreement, which they achieved in 1973.

The Leuenberg process led to the healing of historic disagreements in Europe, and to the creation in 1996 of the Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE), in which these churches shaped by the Reformation retained a mutual recognition of one another as churches, and, unlike the united and uniting churches, of their separate historic identities.

One of the significant consequences of both the Leuenberg Agreement and the CPCE was the mutual recognition and sharing of the ordained ministries between the churches.

9.5 Western bilateral dialogues with the Roman Catholic Church

The most substantive bilateral discussions on ordained ministries with the Roman Catholic Church are those with the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Methodist Council, and the Anglican Communion. The results of these dialogues have been brought together in Cardinal Walter Kasper’s 2009 volume, Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue. Ordained ministry is treated within the third and longest section of the book within ecclesiology and missiology.

Harvesting acknowledges that ‘Ministry in the Church is one of the most discussed and – despite many new insights and convergences – one of the enduring controversial issues in ecumenical dialogue’. Yet the four bilateral partners of the Roman Catholic Church, and with each other, have identified significant convergences on ordained ministries.

All four dialogues affirm an ecclesiology of communion or koinonia, and the place of the mission of the whole Church as necessary convergences in order to discuss ordained ministries. The four bilateral dialogues with the Roman Catholic Church differ from one another on questions of structure, especially the place of bishops; the same differences are raised in their bilateral dialogues with one another, e.g. issues around episcopacy. While not all four partners name ordination as a sacrament, all have identified convergences on the constitutive elements of ordination: it is celebrated through the laying-on-of-hands, prayer, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, and within the community which gives its assent to the candidate. It is the living Christ who bestows ministry in the community.

While the nature of episcopacy remained to be resolved, the ecclesiological principle of episkopé as the exercise of oversight is affirmed in the dialogues. Moreover, episkopé is affirmed as an instrument of communion or koinonia. Following BEM, ministries of episkopé are described as exercised in personal, collegial, and communal ways in the life of the churches, connected with the laity in structures of synodality or collegiality.

While most of the national churches of the Lutheran World Federation, the World Methodist Council, the Anglican Communion, and the World Communion of Reformed Churches have welcomed the ordination of women, Harvesting the Fruits signals this development as a partial obstacle to unity specifically between the churches of the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, no doubt because of the significant convergences already identified on the presbyterate and the episcopate.

9.6 Orthodox bilateral dialogues with Western churches

From the 1920s the Orthodox Churches have been active in the search for Christian unity. They have been vital participants in the Commission on Faith and Order from the beginning, and welcomed bilateral dialogues with Western churches, both the Roman Catholic Church and the churches shaped by the Reformation.

The Orthodox–Catholic dialogue completed its agreed statement on ‘The Sacrament of Order in the Sacramental Structure of the Church’ in 1988. Its agreement on ordained ministries needs to be read in the light of its earlier work on ecclesiology, eucharist, sacraments, and the unity of the Church. The major disagreement in this text is the question of primacy in general, and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in particular.

The International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue (ICAOTD) gave particular attention to ordained ministries in the 2006 Cyprus Agreement (CA), The Church of the Triune God. CA outlines a number of lay and ordained ministries – including the diaconate – that may include women and men. Disagreement between Anglican and Orthodox is on the ordination of women to the priestly ministries of the presbyterate and the episcopate. And yet in its conclusion on the ordination of women, the ICAOTD said:

Given that there is no conciliar teaching on the priestly ministries of women, we need to consider the extent to which our differences on this matter constitute heresies which justify division among Christians. (CA VII.38.iii).

If the ordination of women does not constitute a heresy, we need to ask to what extent the ordination, or non-ordination, of women affects our communion with one another. If our differences on this matter can be contained within Christian communion (koinonia), then we must ask what might be the next steps along the path to unity between Anglicans and Orthodox’. (CA VII.38.iv)

The Lutheran-Orthodox Theological Commission published its Common Statement on The Mystery of the Church: Ordained Ministry/Priesthood (OM/P) in 2017. It was the final topic in a series of agreed statements from 2000 onwards on ecclesiology, sacraments, and salvation, the eucharist and ecclesiology, and mission. The text begins with a quotation from the 2000 agreed statement on Word and Sacraments: ‘we affirm together that the proclamation of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments by the ordained ministry in the church are among the most importantly marks of the church’.

OM/P was able to affirm much in common. For instance, both Lutherans and Orthodox affirm the insight from BEM that the church requires oversight, exercised ‘personally, collegiality and communally’. For Lutherans, there is a flexibility in how these three functions are structured in different churches; the Orthodox identify the three-fold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon as given by Christ, and thus is unchangeable.

On apostolic succession, the Orthodox identity the unbroken succession of ordination from the Apostles as essential. Lutheran members of the dialogue would welcome the historic episcopate for the sake of love and good order, not because its ministries are defective without it.

The central issue in OM/P is the ordination of women. As the Orthodox members of the dialogue state: ‘It has been the unanimous consensus of the Church, everywhere, always, and by all, that only men can serve in the Ordained Ministry’. (OP/M A.51). The Lutheran theological decisions to ordain women emerge from the evidence of women in ministry in the churches mentioned in the New Testament. While the ‘priesthood’ of all believers is distinguished from the ordained ‘priesthood’, for Lutherans anyone who is baptised may be called to ordination. The text concludes: ‘At present, Orthodox and Lutherans recognise that the issue of the ordination of women separates them’.

9.7 The renewal of the diaconate

An instance of renewal in many Western churches has been the recovery of a permanent diaconate as a full and equal order, as well as restoring the tradition of women deacons from antiquity. As seen above, the revival of the deaconess movements within the churches shaped by the Reformation from the sixteenth century to the present can address new contexts for service and diakonia as a constituent element of the mission of the church.

A direction from the Second Vatican Council to renew the diaconate included the possibility for married men to be ordained as permanent deacons. These initiatives identified the distinctive role of the deacon in the church, far beyond a grade or step towards the presbyterate as a time of training and testing.

Other churches have also established a permanent diaconate, particularly Anglican, Methodist, and Lutheran churches. For instance, the North America Academy for the Diaconate is an Anglican/Episcopal association to promote the permanent diaconate. Questions around the recovery of a permanent diaconate raise both theological and pastoral issues about the ongoing practice of the ‘transitional’ diaconate for those candidates for presbyteral ministry who have never articulated a call to be a deacon.

The Commission on Faith and Order’s Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry spends little time on the ministry of deacons, largely as it has not been an historic church-dividing issue. And yet BEM does reflect a wider renewal of the diaconate: ‘Deacons represent to the Church its calling as servant in the world’ (M #31). The commentary notes the recovery of the diaconate in the churches as a ministry in its own dignity. The diaconate may signal a way forward to unity: ‘As the churches move closer together there may be united in this office ministries now existing in a variety of forms and under a variety of names’. (M Commentary #31)

Again, Faith and Order reflection has identified the distinctive ministry of the deacon with the ecclesiological recovery of diakonia as a permanent characteristic of the Church.

The inclusion of women with the diaconate within Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches signals a different kind of renewal of the diaconate. Such a possible direction from the Roman Catholic Church would also signal a renewal. The presence of women in the diaconate may lead to a profound renewal in the Church and its mission.

9.8 Ethical issues around Christian ministry

Recent decades have witnessed a series of ethical issues centred around Christian ministers that will shape perceptions, selection and training of clergy for decades.

If the marriage of the ordained was an ethical issue for the churches shaped by the Reformation, the widespread divorces and remarriages of clergy have been challenges for those churches with a married clergy today. And, whether they may remain within the clergy is an ethical issue for many churches.

Both the ordination and non-ordination of women remains an ethical issue as well as a theological and an ecclesiological issue. The inclusion or exclusion of the members of the LGBTQI+ communities as ordained ministers, especially those who are married, has become a new ethical issue around ordained ministry.

A tragic ethical issue in many churches at the present time is the scope of pastoral and criminal abuse perpetrated by ordained ministries on children and vulnerable people, sometimes for decades. The recognition of the abuse of children and other vulnerable women and men by members of the clergy at the present time has signalled a crisis for the churches, the scope of which has never been exposed before. A related issue is the failure of the churches to respond adequately to the disclosures of abuse. This context has been a crisis for the churches and their ordained ministers. Safeguarding training and criminal record checks of Christian ministers have become standard practices in many parts of the world today.

The far-reaching consequences of abuse perpetrated by Christian churches and their ordained ministers against Indigenous peoples around the world, especially Indigenous children, and the historic collusion of the churches and their ordained ministers in colonialism – especially slavery – will have far reaching consequences on the perception of ordained ministries in the decades to come.

9.9 What are Christian ministers doing in this time?

In the current era, local congregations and parishes are the primary locus for the exercise of ordained ministry. In the global North, many local Christian communities have become smaller due to the demographics of serious decline in Christian affiliation. In many contexts Christian ministers may be serving a number of small communities. Some communities no longer have resident ministers. By contrast, other ecclesial contexts, especially the global South, have experienced a growth of Christianity, especially in the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. The migration of Christians from the global South to the global North, have given rise to new expressions of ministry and of Christian community.

In many parts of the world, pastoral formation for Christian ministry has focused not just on Christian theology and ecclesial polities, but a significant formation in pastoral studies, often informed by the human sciences. In many parts of the world, theology and pastoral formation are taught ecumenically with a mutual reception of pastoral practices, as well as a sense of pastoral collegiality beyond one’s own church community. Whereas once formation for ministry was for people in their early twenties, more than often candidates for theological formation and ordination now tend to be older.

Beyond parishes and congregations, Christian ministers can be found working as professionally trained chaplains in hospital and other clinical settings, as well as in prisons, industries, airports, and the military.

In many places, Christian ministers are ‘bi-locational’, that is, working as Christian ministers while also working in other settings. Other ministers are ‘non-stipendiary’, serving without any payment.

In contexts where Christianity is illegal, marginalised, or discriminated against, Christian ministers work hard to support their communities, often at the cost of their own lives, a tradition that goes back to the early centuries of the Church. In other contexts, Christian ministers have been agents of social justice, embracing a theology of liberation.

At a time of accelerating technology, especially after the COVID pandemic, Christian ministers have made use of the new opportunities to create and sustain online ministry, if not online communities.

Christian ministers in the present time continue to be theologians and teachers across the churches, East and West. Ordained Lutheran theologians in this period include Paul Tillich (1886–1965); Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001); Frank Senn (1943–); Antje Jackelén, archbishop of Uppsala, theologian (1955–); Gordon W. Lathrop (b. 1939); André Birmelé (b. 1947); Marva J. Dawn (1948–2021); Anne Burghardt (b. 1975). Among the Reformed tradition are Frère Roger of Taizé (1915–2005), John McIntyre (1916–2005), Lukas Vischer (1926–2008), Duncan Baillie Forrester(1933–2016). Susan Durber has been the Moderator of the Commission on Faith and Order and is a current president of the WCC. Methodist theologians in this era who are ordained include Geoffrey Wainwright (1939–2020); Jacquelyn Grant (b. 1948); Wesley Ariarajah (b. 1941); Tom Greggs, local preacher, (1980–). Among the significant ordained Anglican theologians are Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury (1904–1988); Desmond Tutu, archbishop of Cape Town (1931–2021); N.T. Wright, bishop (b. 1948); and Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1950). Amongst the notable Anglican theologians who are priests are John MacQuarry (1919–2007), Eugene Fairweather (1920–2000), Paul Avis (b. 1947), Sarah Coakley (b. 1951), Sarah Roland Jones (b. 1959), Jennifer Strawbridge (b. 1978), Wendy Fletcher (b. 1963), and Charlotte Methuen (b. 1964).

The ordained are among the major Roman Catholic theologians in this period. For instance, Henri de Lubac SJ, [non-episcopal] cardinal (1896–1991), Karl Rahner SJ (1904–1984), Yves Marie Congar (1904–1995), Johannes Willebrands, cardinal (1909–2006), Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, pope (1927–2022), Gustavo Gutierrez OP, (b. 1928), Henri Nouwen, priest (1932–1996), Walter Kasper, cardinal bishop (b. 1933), Hans Kung, priest (1928–2021), Daniel Donovan, priest (b. 1937), Charles Morerod OP, bishop (b. 1961), Richard McBrien (1936–2015), and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988).

Amongst the Orthodox in this period, ordained ministers continue to be the main theologians. Like the theologians of preceding period, most modern Orthodox theologians are priests rather than bishops. For instance, Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), and Dimitru Stăniloae (1903–1993), John Myendorff (1926–1992), Alexander Schmemann (1921–1983) Andrew Louth (b. 1944), and John Behr (b. 1966) were all priests. Among the smaller number of episcopal theologians, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (1934–2022), Metropolitan John Zizioulas (1931–2023), Metropolitan Nifon of Targoviste (b. 1944) stand out. Of note is John Chryssavgis, a deacon (b. 1958). Amongst the significant Oriental Orthodox theologians of this period are priests Baby Varghese (b. 1953) and Shahe Ananyan (b. 1982); amongst the bishops are Metropolitan Bishoy of Damietta (1942–2018), Catholicos Aram (b. 1947), and Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Coorilos (b. 1965).

9.10 Summary

The second phase of the Ecumenical Movement generated more theological reflection on ordained ministries than any other era in the history of Christianity. While the goal of a reconciled and mutually recognised ministry has not (yet) been achieved, the level of theological reflection on ministry has been high, and in some significant instances has borne much fruit within the churches shaped by the Reformation, such as the united and uniting churches, full communion agreements such the Leuenberg Agreement, or Anglican-Lutheran agreements in different parts of the world. Historic church-dividing issues on ordained ministry in the multilateral and bilateral dialogues have not been dealt with in isolation, but within the wider context of ecclesiology and mission.

In many parts of the church today, the work of Christian ministers continues the life and work of their ancient forbears, another kind of ‘apostolic tradition’. An enduring inheritance for ordained ministry from the first century to the present day is the deep nexus between Christian liturgy, ministry, and mission.