REB: The Churches The Apostles Left Behind, Chapter 2.

The Pauline Heritage in the Pastorals: The Importance of Church Structure

(some sub-headings have been added, to help in studying this interesting chapter)

I wish to begin my discussion of the churches the apostles left behind with three epistles that in some ways constitute the most formal, ex professo treatment of sub-apostolic continuance in the NT. Paul spent much of his Christian life as a missionary, adding constantly to the number of those who had come to believe in Jesus Christ. The setting of the two letters written to Timothy and of the one letter to Titus envisions Paul near death: "the time for my departure has come; I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race" (2Tm 4:6-7). Accordingly, his thoughts turn to the Christians he is leaving behind. How are they to survive, especially since an enormous danger is presented by false teachers who could mislead them (Tt 1:10; 1 Tm 4:1-2; 2 Tm 3:6; 2 Tm 4:3)? In other words, Paul's interests are now no longer primarily missionary but pastoral; he is concerned with tending the existing flock. Of course, such an interest is not lacking in his early letters, but appropriately these three letters have been dubbed "Pastoral" par excellence. {32} (Let me add parenthetically that a similar shift is found in the image of Peter in Jn 21. The Synoptic Gospels remember Peter as the fisherman who was turned into a catcher of men (Lk 5:10). In the first part of Jn 21 (1-11) Peter makes a miraculous catch of fish and drags ashore a net bulging with 153 large fish. Then the imagery changes abruptly as Jesus ignores the fish and instructs Peter to feed his lambs or sheep (Jn 21:15-17). The imagery of fish is quite appropriate for the missionary activity of bringing people into the Christian community, but does not lend itself to the ongoing care of those who are brought in. The hallowed NT image for that is shepherding a flock - the image from which we get the term "pastoral." Just as Paul the missionary, when pictured as dying, becomes primarily Paul the pastor preserving those whom he has converted, so in Jn 21 there is a shift of imagery from Peter the fisherman to Peter the shepherd. In the Petrine "pastoral epistle," Peter gives sheep-tending advice (1 Pt 5:1-3).)

The dying Paul's advice on how to survive, given to Timothy and Titus, and through them to Christian communities, is clearly and concisely an answer in terms of structure. Some of the Pauline communities are deficient in that they do not have local authorities, but now that deficiency must be remedied and presbyter-bishops are to be appointed in every town (Tt 1:5,7). The authoritative guidance of these men will preserve the local church communities against disintegration.

The church authorities in the Pastorals

Elsewhere I have gone into detail on the complicated question of the designation and function of the church authorities in the Pastorals,47 so let me here by way of background simply list my conclusions. Although the word presbyteros (comparative of presbys, "old," meaning "elder" in Greek) refers to age, the custom of seeking advice from the senior men of a community meant that "elder" or "presbyter" came to designate a functionary chosen ideally for wisdom, often elder in age but not necessarily so. Jewish synagogues had {33} groups of elders or presbyters who set synagogue policy. Christian presbyters, however, had a pastoral supervising role that went beyond the Jewish counterparts; and so we find them designated by a second title, episkopos, "overseer, supervisor, bishop." The oft-made claim that the presbyteros is a role borrowed from Judaism while episkopos is a role borrowed from Gentile (pagan) secular and religious administration is oversimplified and ignores the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the century and a half before Christianity the Essenes described in the Scrolls had, besides presbyters, functionaries called "overseers" with teaching, admonitory, and administrative roles almost identical to those of the bishops of the Pastorals. The Essene religious overseers were figuratively described as "shepherds," even as were Christian bishops (Ac 20:28-29; 1Pt 5:1-3). Thus, I think it plausible that from the synagogue Christians borrowed a pattern of groups of presbyters for each church, while the pastoral-supervisor (episkopos) role given to all or many of these presbyters48 came from the organizational model of close-knit Jewish sectarian groups such as the Dead Sea Essenes. There is nothing in the Pastorals to suggest that presbyter-bishops dealt with the eucharist or baptism. Nor do we know how presbyter-bishops were appointed, although by the time Acts was written (the 80s or 90s) Barnabas and Paul could be pictured as having appointed presbyters in every church (14:25). That the picture has been oversimplified is indicated by Tt 1:5 where it is clear that there are towns of the Pauline mission without presbyters. According to Didache 15:1 (ca. {34} 100?) Christians were invited to appoint for themselves bishops and deacons.

Such background information about presbyter-bishops may be useful, but it should not distract us from those functions of the presbyter-bishops that make them the Pastorals' answer to how Pauline communities will survive after his death. First and foremost in the Pastorals the presbyter-bishops are to be the official teachers of the community, holding to the sound doctrine that they have received from Paul through Titus and Timothy and rejecting any novel or different teaching. They can protect the community from false doctrine because they can silence wrong teachers (Tt 1:9-2:1; 1 Tm 4:1-11; 1 Tm 5:17). Second, since the church is "the household of God" (1 Tm 3:15: a comparison heightened because the church met in a house), the presbyter-bishops are to be like fathers taking responsibility for a home, administering its goods and providing example and discipline. Stability and close relationship similar to that of a family home will hold the church together against the disintegrating forces that surround or invade it.

Institutional virtues

The qualities demanded of the presbyter-bishop are institutional virtues such as would be appreciated in a tight organization with a familial tone. He must be blameless, upright, and holy; he must be self-controlled and not arrogant or quick-tempered (Tt 1:7-9). He must be able to manage his own home well and control his children (1 Tm 3:4). It is implied that he must be able to manage the budget of his own home; in particular, he must not be a lover of money (1 Tm 3:3,5) - character requirements all the more important if, as may well be suspected from Dead Sea Scroll parallels, the presbyter-bishop had to administer the common money of the Christian community. A blotch like drunkenness cannot be tolerated on his moral record (Tt 1:7; 1 Tm 3:3). Indeed, at times the requirements border on matters of religious respectability: he cannot have been married more than once; he cannot be a recent convert; his children must be Christian (Tt 1:6; 1 Tm 3:2,6).

These latter requirements reflect the emergence of the church as a society with set standards that it is imposing on its public figures. Jesus during his ministry called prominent followers from various walks of life without any consideration how society might look on {35} fishermen, tax collectors, and a zealot. But Jesus was not structuring a society; he did not live in an organized church; the Twelve were selected not as administrators but as eschatological judges of the renewed Israel (Mt 19:28; Lk 22:30). Once the movement associated with Christ became organized enough to be a society called "church," however, it began to decide that certain standards of religious respectability were very important for the common good. Individuals, however talented, who did not meet those standards would have to be sacrificed. The presbyter, after all, had to serve as a model father of a family. A man converted after his children had grown might be a natural leader; but if he did not meet the qualification of having believing children, he was not to be appointed presbyter-bishop. Sometimes recent converts are insecure or not mature in their Christian judgment; other times they are filled with an extraordinary zeal that might galvanize a community. The Pastoral Epistles would allow no recent convert, talented or not, to function in the presby-teral office - almost an ironic requirement, granted the history of the man who is supposed to be writing the letters. Indeed, Paul might not have been able to meet several requirements the Pastorals would impose on the presbyter-bishops. "Not quick-tempered" (Tt 1:7) would scarcely describe the Paul who called the Galatians "fools" (Ga 3:1). "Dignified" (1 Tm 3:2) would not fit the Paul who wished that his circumcising adversaries would slip with the knife and castrate themselves (Ga 5:12) and who could utter such vituperation as "Their God is their belly" (Philip 3:19). Rough vitality and a willingness to fight bare-knuckled for the Gospel were part of what made Paul a great missionary, but such characteristics might have made him a poor residential community supervisor. The Pastorals are listing qualities necessary for someone who would have to get along with a community for a long time; fortunately for all, perhaps, Paul's missionary genius kept him on the move.

Less emphasis on charisms

Naturally, the writer of the Pastorals hopes that individuals with charismatic gifts will be appointed presbyter-bishops, but he is willing to sacrifice charismatic qualities for more pedestrian qualities{36} that will facilitate harmony in the Christian community. Such an early imposition of community standards should be remembered when a question arises today about the right of the church to set societal standards for its clergy. For instance, I have heard the right of the church to demand a college-educated clergy challenged on the grounds that Jesus did not demand education for membership in the Twelve. The logic of that type of observation should be rejected because of the dissimilarity of situation. As I indicated above, the Twelve were not residential clergy; and Jesus never lived in a structured church. Similarly to be queried is the idea that the requirements imposed by the Pastorals are eternally valid. Rather, since sometimes the requirements have to do with public respectability, they can and should change in the course of time. The primitive church was prejudiced against the remarriage of widowers (1 Tm 5:9,11; 1 Co 7:8), allowing it only reluctantly for ordinary people. Consequently, the Pastorals would not tolerate remarried presbyter-bishops (1 Tm 3:2; Tt 1:6); they should meet the ideal. Today few Protestant churches would refuse ordination to remarried widowers. On the other hand, an echo of being "the husband of only one wife" is found in many Protestant churches that impose on their clergy the requirement of not being remarried after divorce (even though they allow such remarriage for laity). Roman Catholicism has imposed Paul's personal standard ("It is well for them to remain single as I do":1 Co 7:8) on all its presbyters. One can always query the wisdom of individual requirements that different churches have made for their presbyterate, but the right to make such requirements seems to have been supposed from the beginning.

Early Catholicism of the Pastorals

Institutionalization of the Christian movement was an aspect of what scholars call "early Catholicizing." (Early Catholicism is often a pejorative designation to cover the emergence of ecclesiastical features found later in Roman Catholicism and deemed objectionable by the Reformers and their spiritual descendants among contemporary biblical scholars.) While judgment on that term and topic re- {37} quire nuance, Gager is certainly correct in pointing out that "a good deal of nonsense has been written about the decline of primitive Christianity into early Catholicism." Rudolf Bultmann would agree with Sohm that "legal regulation (when seen as constitutive) contradicts the Church's nature." Rather, if the church is a society, regulations, constitutive or otherwise, are an inevitable sociological development that is of the nature of the church.

Strengths and Weaknesses of this model of church

Having described briefly a principal motif in the Pastoral Epistles, namely the stress on church structure, let me now point out both the strengths and weaknesses of such an emphasis as an answer to church continuance after the death of the apostles (or more precisely, after the death of the apostle, Paul). I forewarn readers that a section on strengths and weaknesses will also be part of subsequent chapters dealing with other answers. All answers to a theological problem, of necessity being partial and time-conditioned, involve paying a price. One emphasis, no matter how necessary at a particular time, will inevitably lead to a neglect of truth found in another answer or emphasis. I plan to center on three points in my discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the Pastorals' structural answer: (1) The idea of preserving an apostolic heritage against radical ideas and teachers; (2) The safe institutional virtues required of pastors; (3) The sharp distinction between those who teach and those who are taught.

First, impressive stability and solid continuity are marks of an institutional structure (presbyter-bishops and deacons) designed to preserve the apostolic heritage. The Pastorals have found a way to highlight the uniqueness of the apostle and at the same time to extend his influence beyond his lifetime. Apostolicity is personified in {38} Paul - no other apostle is mentioned and no other is needed54 - and this apostle provides for the aftermath of his departure by passing on his heritage to the presbyter-bishops under the supervision of Timothy and Titus. Emphatically Paul is a teacher, "a teacher of the nations" (1 Tm 2:7; see also 2 Tm 1:11); and the chief function of his heirs is to teach "sound doctrine" (Tt 2:1), carrying on the guidance given to his converts by the apostle. The bishop must "hold firmly to the sure word as it was taught" (Tt 1:9). Timothy, who had been an observer of how Paul taught (2 Tm 3:10), is admonished, "Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it" (3:14).

Silencing of Opponents

The enemy against whom this advice is directed are teachers who are introducing new ideas, a group described as insubordinate men, empty talkers, and deceivers. Such people love discussion and controversies (1 Tm 6:4-5; Tt 3:9); and they win an admiring following among hearers with "itching ears" (2 Tm 4:3), a group that might be described less pejoratively as having enquiring minds. The apostle of the Pastorals would have such purveyors of new and different ideas stopped from teaching (1 Tm 1:3): "They must be silenced, for they are upsetting whole households by teaching for dishonest profit what they have no right to teach" (Tt 1:11). The faithful are reminded to be submissive to rulers and authorities, both secular and religious (Tt 3:1). In the Pastorals, then, we have the ancestor of the theology of a deposit of doctrine, and such ecclesiastical developments as the approval of professors, imprimaturs, an index of forbidden books, and supervised church presses - features not unique to Roman Catholicism by any means, even if the same names are not used in other churches and the control is not as obvious.

Defence against Gnostic heresies

The historical circumstances in which the Pastoral Epistles were written involved great danger for the form of Christianity that would ultimately be designated "orthodoxy" (pp. 17-18 above). A following {39} among Christians was already being won by the propagandists of gnosticism (1 Tm 6:20: what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis)). The struggle-to-the-death that would culminate ca. 180 in the Adversus haereses of Irenaeus had now begun. Already the "Paul" of the Pastorals had divined that the best response to a plethora of views claiming to be revealed and even traditional was a pedigreed tradition, involving a link between the apostolic era and approved church officials. Irenaeus would only be refining the argument when he appealed to a chain of bishops of the great Christian centers in his refutation of gnostic doctrines. I would contend that the underlying maxim, "Hold firmly to the sure word as it was taught" (Tt 1:9), remains an essential weapon in times of major doctrinal crisis. It enabled the Roman Catholic Church to survive the tumultuous days of the Reformation; it enabled Luther's movement to survive an anarchical Protestant left-wing (Schwdrmerei) spawned by his own protest against Rome; today it should enable the mainline churches to survive biblicist sectarians. True, a stringent control over teaching (and writing) exercised by church authorities runs against a democratic sense of freedom of thought and expression; but in the rare moments when theological freedom threatens to become anarchy, "the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tm 3:15) has the right not to let itself be destroyed from within.

The great danger with an exclusive stress on officially controlled teaching, however, is that, having been introduced at moments of crisis, it becomes a consistent way of life. The Pastoral Epistles, shaped by doctrinal crisis, are often read without context as offering a universal and unconditioned policy. Truly pastoral policy, rather, requires a relaxation of such stringent controls when the crisis has {40} passed. For instance, having survived both the Reformation and the Enlightenment through controlled teaching, the Roman Catholic Church showed great wisdom in abolishing some of its negative doctrinal controls as an aftermath of Vatican II.

The peril of entrenched orthodoxy

What type of exaggeration may flow from the failure to see that an exclusive stress on appointed teachers is a policy conditioned by dangerous times? The fear of new ideas evident in the Pastorals may become endemic in the structured church. There are times when having "itching ears" in the sense of an inquisitive mind is necessary in order to keep the spirit of Jesus from being suppressed. After all, the Jesus who challenged the religious authorities of his time with the dictum, "Let that person hear who has ears to hear" (Mt 11:15; cf. Mk 8:18), could well be accused of having admired itching ears. At certain times the greatest peril facing a well-ordered institutional church is not the peril of new ideas but the peril of no ideas. The community described in the Pastorals would be perfectly safe if no one thought any other ideas than those handed down. Then, however, it might fall under the condemnation of the gospel parable against the servant who was perfectly happy to hand over what he had received, but was considered by Jesus as wicked and slothful because he had added nothing new to it (Mt 25:24-30).

More pastoral than missionary

The idea of entrusted truth (2 Tm 1:14), translated into a "deposit of faith," is very useful as a corrective against liberal romantics who think that Christian theology can be created anew in each generation. It has severe limitations if it projects the image of a safe deposit box sterilely protecting what was put into it in the first century. Every generation must add to the deposit through its unique experience of Christ in its time. The presbyter-bishops of the church must "hold firmly to the sure word as it was taught" to them (Tt 1:9), and woe to them if part of the deposit of faith is lost in their administration. But also woe to them if they do not encourage constructive {41} insights that augment and nuance the sound doctrine they are obliged to teach. A weakness of the Pastorals is that the latter duty is never mentioned.

Second, a related strength and weakness in the Pastorals is a total orientation toward pastoral qualities in the officials of the structure that is to be erected. Through the safe, institutional virtues demanded of the presbyter-bishops (tantamount to prudence, sobriety, and balance), these writings are meant to insure a benevolent, holy, and efficient administration. The "clergy" appointed by Timothy and Titus should have been good, sound people, easy to get along with as resident pastors; but their job profile is not likely to have brought to leadership dynamic "movers" who would change the world. As I point out above (p. 35), the historical Paul could not easily have met the requirements for the local presbyter-bishop. But then the historical Paul was a missionary and never a lifetime resident in a settled community. He had risky new ideas about Christ as the end of the Law and an untamable restlessness that made him highly successful in opening new frontiers for Christ. Traversing those frontiers, whether geographic or intellectual, required an un-conventionality frowned on by the Pastorals. Paradoxically, the leaders of the Jerusalem circumcision party opposed to Paul (whom he undiplomatically called "false brethren" in Ga 2:4) may have exemplified well some of the condemnatory attitudes encouraged by the Pastorals, for undoubtedly they regarded Paul as a dangerous teacher of novelties who should be silenced. After all, in their estimation he did not hold on to the sound doctrine taught by Jesus (in the tradition of Mt 5:18), namely that not the smallest letter, not even the smallest part of a letter, of the Law would pass away.

In other words the pastor and the missionary are different roles that characteristically require different strengths. One may justly observe that making new converts was not the problem faced by the "Paul" of the Pastorals. The fact, however, that the Pastorals were {42} shaped by the problem then at hand often has not been recognized, and they have been thought to describe an ideal church order adequate for all times. In fact they make no structural provision for ongoing mission activity; and the thrust toward such highly prudential leaders, holding on to the past, creates an orientation that is not going to favor the innovations necessary for a dynamic mission. That recognition becomes all the more important if the pastoral care even of those who are already Christian requires a missionary innovative-ness, as it often does in times of change. Alas, the judgment of both higher church authorities and of the laity on pastors has too often been exclusively along the lines promoted by the Pastorals. The pastors who disturb because they see that new things have to be done, and those who are impatient over the inertia they encounter have frequently been rejected. So often churches work on what I call "the Caiaphas principle" when they encounter a brilliantly disturbing leader: It is better that one man be eliminated than that the whole institution perish (Jn 11:50). There may be a certain societal inevitability to that principle, but the source of it should at least make the designation "weakness" none too strong for a tendency (which is incipient in the Pastorals) to favor blandness.

Solid or excessive conservatism?

Third, there are strengths and weaknesses in the church's having carefully selected presbyter-bishops who alone can hand on the doctrine safely, with the result that other teachers arouse suspicion. The plus and minus values are patent in 2 Tm 3:1-9, a passage that vituperates other teachers who oppose the authority of the presbyters and mislead people:

'But understand this: in the last days there will come times of stress. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, unforgiving, slanderers, profligate, brutal, haters of good, "treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 'holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Have nothing to do with such people. Tor among them are those who make their way into households and gain control over weak women burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, 'who will listen to anybody and never arriveat a knowledge of the truth. As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these oppose the truth - these people of depraved mind and counterfeit faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.' {43}

The vituperation is made up of customary, expected charges. The gnostic teachers under attack may well have deserved some of the descriptive adjectives; but not infrequently where only approved teachers flourish, those who ask probing questions about the standard doctrine will be presented as the opponents of God's truth. In other words, prompted by struggle, the Pastorals present a dualistic view of the true and the counterfeit, but ordinary church life is scarcely dualistic. Differing from standard teaching may indeed be a mark of false teachers who need to be opposed; it may also be a mark of constructive thinkers whose ideas, startling at first, may lead the appointed teachers to perceive more clearly what really has been entrusted to be guarded with the help of the Holy Spirit (2 Tm 1:14). In the Roman Catholic Church the Galileo case is a notorious example of where the official teachers confused a new teaching with false teaching because involved was a different view, challenging what had always been taught from the Scriptures about the relation between the sun and the earth. One could find thousands of less famous examples, many of them in Protestantism; and they warn us that a condemnatory dualistic approach may be an example of weakness rather than of strength.

Stereotype of women's contribution

In regard to the 2 Tm 3 passage, however, I am more interested in the attitude of this passage towards those who are taught, for the author ungracefully refers to "weak women" as an example of the ignorant and impulsive who are easily misled. One may argue that he is not speaking about all women61 and that in his time women were seldom given the opportunity of education. Meeks, First Urban Il-IA, points out that conservative Greco-Roman historians and satirists {44} frequently blamed the lush growth of esoteric cults and superstitions on irresponsible women who felt emancipated by them. Plutarch (Moralia: Coniugalia praecepta 145 CE) observes that uneducated women tend to believe in superstitious stupidities, and unless they receive the seeds of good doctrine, they conceive monstrosities. Certainly some of the rules limiting women in the Pauline writings are designed to show that Christians are not rebels against the social expectations of the Hellenistic world, and are not a wild sect. Be that as it may,2 Tm 3:6-7 can easily contribute to a generalization wherein women typify the taught section of the community who will always get things wrong unless they are instructed by the official teachers. Understandably, many modern readers or hearers will be offended by what will appear to them as sexist; and preachers, instead of decrying such a reaction as simplistic or anchronistic, should take the trouble to interpret the passage critically in both senses of that adverb. Elsewhere62 I have stated my firm opinion that little is gained in public reading by omitting offensive Bible passages, for bowdlerized versions permit people too easily to say they "accept" the Bible. They never hear passages that should cause an intelligent audience to demur and to ask themselves constructive questions that will lead them to recognize the human conditioning in the biblical account. Hearing the difficult passages of the Bible and wrestling with them honestly (rather than explaining them away) will strengthen the realization that every word spoken about God on this earth, including the biblical word, which is uniquely "of God," is a partial and limited witness to the truth. To accept the Bible in that sense leads to a faith that is not credulous.

As part of the "wrestling" with this passage in 2 Timothy, I would like to go beyond the unpleasant fact that women personify the dangerously weak and naive in order to concentrate on the problem of a class of those who are taught. (I shall return to the Pastorals' treatment of women in Chapter 7 below.) From the Pastorals one gets the impression that officially appointed teachers and false teachers are battling for the minds of those who are to be taught. Some{45} times such a picture has been equated with the classical theological distinction between the ecclesia docens (teaching church) and the ecclesia discens (learning church). This is a valid distinction as long as one recognizes that membership in the two groups is mobile - at one time or other every Christian is or should be part of the teaching church and everyone should be part of the learning church. However, from the Pastorals one might judge that, apart from the presbyters, everyone else is in a fixed class of the taught who, if not instructed by the official teachers, will be deceived by false teachers. Only the foolish would deny the danger that uneducated members of a Christian community will be deceived by false teachers. For instance, today there are many Roman Catholics (and increasingly many Protestants from the mainline churches) who have little acquaintance with the Bible from youth and whose first real familiarity with it comes through hearing fundamentalist media-preachers. How quickly they can be convinced by simplistic interpretations! But granted this, very often a greater peril faces the community where the dividing line between official teachers and the taught is very sharp, namely, the peril that little by way of creative ideas or intellectual contributions is expected from the taught who constitute the majority of the community.

Inhibiting ideas "from the bottom up"

Certainly 2 Tm 3:6-7 shows no expectation that sometimes women might on their own detect a falsehood peddled to them or might even have something to teach the presbyters. The failure of the author to make allowance for ideas "from the bottom up," as if all perspicacity comes from the top down in the structure, does not prepare the ordinary readers of the Pastorals to play a contributive role in teaching. Such a one-sided situation will become ever more disastrous in any area of the world where the laity are highly educated and quite capable of making a significant contribution toward the overall religious growth of the community. Of course, even educated laity need to be taught the great Christian tradition, and that is a signal task of the official teachers of the church who have been (or should have been) trained in that tradition. But once having been instructed, some lay people are quite capable of being {46} teachers themselves, not just transmitting what they received but making their own contribution. The Pastoral Epistles were written at a time when the author felt he had to tell Titus (3:1), "Remind the people to be submissive to rulers and authorities"; perhaps he expected the good sense that at another time it would be said, "Remind them to be constructive and contributive." But the fact is that such a follow-up directive never made it into the Scriptures that were to be so pastorally determinant. That is a weakness.

A need to insist that there are weaknesses in the Pastorals' proposal of firm administration by official teachers is a compliment to the enormous strength of that proposal, which has tended to dominate church history precisely because it worked so well. Communities that have reacted by ignoring it have often been short-lived. As we shall see in Chapter 7 below, the one NT community that specifically rejected the idea of official teachers lost many of its members, and the remnant ultimately had to accept a qualified form of pastoral authority. {47}