[daniel1212]

Non-sequitur. Nobody denies that there were married Apostles. Many men were married before ordination (the laying on of hands described in the NT). I know of no record of a man getting married *after* ordination, unless he had apostatized from the Faith during one of the persecutions. (This was an issue at the time of the Donatist controversy.) But if you know of such a record, I’d be much obliged if you’d post your information.

You basically ignored most of my post. It is not up to me to show a man getting married after ordination, for even the apostles had that freedom, but it is up to you show your novel restriction in the life of the NT church, and that pastors were ordained distinctly as priests, and who normatively had the gift of celibacy.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Yes, I ignored most of your post because it did not relate to the question at hand.

You —— correct me if I’m wrong —— do not recognize that the Sacred Scriptures are an essential part, yet only a part, of the larger Apostolic Tradition. That makes issues like parsing the word *presbuteros* kind of off-topic.

A Scripture Sola perspective makes all questions concerning the hierarchical structure of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th Century Church literally unanswerable.

As far as anybody would know or care, the whole shebang “petered out” about 100 AD. Went dark. Went kaput. You couldn’t prove anything different from Scripture.

But that is blinkered ignorance.

At any rate, the question is, “In actual historic fact, in the early Church period or at any other time, did any of the ranks of deacons, presbyteroi, episcopoi, get married *after* their laying on of hands?

Far as I know, the answer is No.