The Original Bishops (Stewart)

The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities
Alistair C. Stewart

This is a work of truly impressive scholarship which sets forth a thesis I had not heard before. I am not familiar with the relevant literature, with which the author copiously interacts, so I am not in the best position to evaluate it. Nevertheless, his central contention--that the bishop was primarily responsible for distribution of the eucharist, an "economic" responsibility--strikes me as quite plausible. Further, explaining presbytyrs with reference to citywide federative models of churches goes some way to explaining a lot of the NT data. I think that Benjamin L. Merkle is right, however, to criticize some of the Scriptural lacunae in Stewart's argument (namely James 5:14 in particular). My other major criticism is that this book is extremely dry, and not particularly well-organized. i had a hard time summarizing the overall structure and shape of his argument once I got to the end of the book. Definitely not for anyone but the reader extremely interested in this specific topic.


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