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To: Houghton M.

Hard to do any convincing when you cannot cite ANYTHING in the New Testament that portrays a bishop’s duties as you have just laid them out.

If a man desireth the office of a bishop. Here, for the first time in the New Testament, is there a delineation of the qualifications and duties of bishops and deacons. Both offices have been alluded to in Acts (elders, Ac 11:30 14:23 15:02 16:04 20:17; deacons, Ac 6:1-6), and both are named in Php 1:1. To form a correct idea of the New Testament bishop we must get away from modern episcopacy. The New Testament bishop was not diocesan, but in charge of a single church. Each church had a plurality. Elders or presbyters, and bishops were only different designations for the same office. This arrangement was not changed until after the close of the first century and the death of the last of the apostles. Of these statements, admitted by the candid learned even of episcopal bodies, the following proofs may be submitted: (1) Paul summons the elders of the church at Ephesus (Ac 20:17), and calls them bishops ( overseers ) in Ac 20:28. (2) In the church of Philippi the bishops and deacons are named as the officers (Php 1:1). (3) Paul in this Epistle names bishops and deacons as the officers (1Ti 3:1,12), but names elders as officers entrusted with the same duties already named as those of the bishops in 1Ti 5:17-22. (4) In the Epistle to Titus, Paul commands to ordain elders in every city (Titus 1:5), but in turn describing the qualifications of an elder he calls him a bishop (Titus 1:7). (5) Peter addresses elders and commands them to exercise the office of bishops over the flock (1Pe 5:1,2). The Greek word episkope, as well as the word bishop, etymologically means to act as an overseer, or to take the oversight. (6) I might add that Clement of Rome, who wrote to Corinthians about the beginning of the second century, uses the terms interchangeably.


48 posted on 03/09/2010 1:38:11 PM PST by the long march
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To: the long march
"Hard to do any convincing when you cannot cite ANYTHING in the New Testament that portrays a bishop’s duties as you have just laid them out."

Scripture tells us what must be done, but it is not a how to manual. Besides, why do you care how an organization that you are not a part of and know nothing of organizes its administration and affairs?

108 posted on 03/09/2010 4:55:22 PM PST by Natural Law
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