“And what marvel if they who were entrusted in Christ with such a work by God appointed the aforesaid persons, seeing that even the blessed Moses, who was a faithful servant in all his house, recorded for a sum in the sacred books all things that were enjoined upon him. And him also the rest of the prophets followed, bearing joint witness with him unto the laws that were ordained by him. For he, when jealousy arose concerning the priesthood, and there was dissension among the tribes which of them was adorned with the glorious name, commanded the twelve chiefs of the tribes to bring to him rods inscribed with the name of each tribe. And he took them and tied them, and sealed them with the signet-rings of the chiefs of the tribes, and put them away in the tabernacle of the testimony on the table of God. And having shut the tabernacle, he sealed the keys, and likewise also the rods. And he said unto them, Brethren, the tribe whose rod shall bud, this hath God chosen to be priests and officiants unto Him. Now when morning came, he called together all Israel, even the six hundred thousand men, and showed the seals to the chiefs of the tribes, and opened the tabernacle of the testimony, and drew forth the rods. And the rod of Aaron was found not only with buds, but also bearing fruit. What think ye, beloved? Did not Moses know beforehand that this would come to pass? Assuredly he knew it. But that disorder might not arise in Israel, he did thus, to the end that the Name of the true and only God might be glorified: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
“And our Apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the dignity of the episcopate. For this cause, therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, and they established a succession, that if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their liturgic function.[46] Those, therefore, that were appointed by them, or afterward by other men of repute, with the consent of the whole Church, and who performed their office blamelessly to the flock of Christ, with lowliness, gentleness, and a generous spirit, and for a long time have borne a good report with all, these we judge it not consonant with justice to deprive of their office. For it will be no light sin in us to deprive of the episcopate those who offer the gifts blamelessly and holily. Blessed are those presbyters who have gone before, seeing that their departure was fruitful and ripe, for they have no fear lest any one should remove them from their appointed place. For we see that you are displacing certain persons who were living honourably from the office which they had blamelessly performed.”
St. Clement, in the above passages, states in few but precise words how the whole Christian ministry was appointed by Christ with the most exact order. “The Master commanded the offerings and liturgic acts to be performed with care, and not to be done rashly or in disorder, but at fixed times and seasons. And where and by whom He would have them performed He himself fixed by His supreme will, that all things being done with piety, according to His good pleasure, might be acceptable to His will.” We have seen that only the appointment of the supreme authority—that of St. Peter and the Apostolic College—is recorded in the Gospels and Acts. All details are omitted. But this does not mean that such details were either unimportant or left to be developed casually. Here it is expressly said that our Lord appointed them all, and left strict injunctions both as to the persons who should execute them and the things to be done. And then St. Clement assumes rather than states—so entirely uncontested and acknowledged seems it to be in his mind—that the Christian order succeeds the Mosaic in the triple division of high priest, priest, and levite. “They therefore that make their offerings at the appointed seasons are acceptable and blessed; for while they follow the institutions of the Master they cannot go wrong.” He speaks of a present, not a past time; of an actual, not a typical order, continuing thus: “For unto the high priest his proper liturgic acts are assigned, and to the priests their proper office is appointed, and upon the levites their proper ministrations are laid. The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances. Let each of you, brethren, in his own rank, give thanks to God, maintaining a good conscience, and not transgressing the appointed rule of His service, but acting with all seemliness.”[47] It cannot be denied that these are injunctions issued to those to whom he was speaking. And the tacit appropriation of the Jewish names and offices to the Christian order, with the injunction of present obedience, all based upon the direct institution of “the Master,” is every way to be noted. But he proceeds to say that, if the Mosaic services are accurately performed according to a divine rule, much more should the Christian be. “Not in every place, brethren, are the continual daily sacrifices offered, or the free-will offerings, or the sin-offerings, and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem alone. And even there the offering is not made in every place, but before the sanctuary in the court of the altar, and this too through the high priest and the aforesaid officiants, after that the victim to be offered has been inspected for blemishes. They then who do anything contrary to the seemly ordinance of His will receive death as the penalty. You see, brethren, in proportion as greater knowledge has been vouchsafed to us, so much the more are we exposed to danger.”
How, it may be asked, comes it that he mentions the worship at Jerusalem as going on when the city and temple had been destroyed twenty-five years before?
I would suggest that St. Clement is considering the whole order of the Aaronic priesthood and worship as a divine appointment. In this point of view, it is apart from time, that is, he mentions it ideally as a divine institution. Moreover, he clearly considers it as carried on in the Christian ministry, as having found in that ministry its complete fulfilment. In this aspect it was of no importance that the worship at Jerusalem, to which he referred, had ceased by a divine judgment to be any longer in existence. It had fulfilled its work; the blood of bulls and goats, which typified the most Precious Blood, was offered no more; but instead the sacrifice to which it had pointed. He quotes it for what had not passed, the divine institution of a certain order in it. If, for the violation of this order, death was inflicted, how much more should those who transgressed the Christian institution, as having been vouchsafed greater knowledge, be exposed to danger. Moreover, was not the fact of Jesus being the Christ a basis in St. Clement’s mind for the belief that the Mosaic worship was carried on, with the requisite change, in the Christian? How deeply lay in his mind the feeling that the Christian Church was a continuation of the Jewish—the child coming forth from the embryo of the Jewish womb—is apparent through the whole letter.
The third point, then, which we note is, that the ordinances of Christ, in all that concerns the priesthood and the rites of His Church, were to be observed according to the rule which “the Master” Himself had given even more accurately than the Mosaic ritual, though that also was of divine institution, had been observed.
In the next section St. Clement states very concisely, but with the greatest energy, that quality in the transmission of spiritual power on which we have dwelt in drawing out the scriptural record, that it came altogether from above, not from below: “The Apostles evangelised us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ from God. So then Christ was sent forth by God, and the Apostles by Christ. Both, therefore, came of the will of God in the appointed order. Having then received a charge, and having been fully assured through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in the word of God with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth with the good tidings that the kingdom of God was about to come.” As the whole appointment proceeded originally from Christ to the Apostles, so in the appointments of the Apostles it proceeded from them to those whom they chose. Authority, therefore, in the kingdom of Christ, pursued throughout one descent: it came by the mandate of superiors, not by the election of inferiors. Thus St. Clement restates the Apostolic mission as recorded by St. John: “As My Father hath sent Me, I also send you.” But he adds a fact to a principle—a fact which, recording as it does the whole order of the propagation of the faith in the first two generations from the day of Pentecost, is of the utmost value. “So preaching everywhere from country to country, and from city to city, they went on appointing their first-fruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons for those that were to believe.” That is, the Apostles when they came into a town, preaching as St. Paul and St. Barnabas are described as doing at Iconium, at Lystra, and at Derbe, were guided by a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the choosing of future rulers among those who heard them and listened to them. These “first-fruits” of their labour they invested with the episcopal consecration and office, and themselves passing on to other places, left the bishop and his deacons to form the future people. In the bishop they planted the root of the complete tree; from his person radiated the priests and deacons; from his mouth came the tradition of the divine doctrine, and thenceforth in that place all Christian ordinances began to exist and to be exercised. The bishop is the ecclesiastical unit, the father and generator after the pattern of Christ, whom he represents. The process is entirely different from another which has often in thought been substituted for it, according to which an existing number of believers might elect their superiors, and the ecclesiastical rule be exercised in virtue of a sort of imagined social compact. But the words of St. Clement are precise in excluding any such origin of Christian mission: he says that the Apostles appointed their first-fruits to be bishops and deacons of those who were to believe, not of those who believed already; they created the ministry, that the ministry might form the people as yet future.[48] All this, he adds, was in accordance with ancient prophecy.
He then proceeds to draw attention to the most remarkable origin of the Jewish hierarchy, in that Moses determined the devolution of the high priesthood to Aaron by appealing to a miraculous judgment of God in causing his rod to bear fruit among the rods of the chiefs of the tribes. In truth, there is no act recorded more strikingly typical of the divine economy in the mission of our Lord than the creation of the whole Jewish priesthood in the person of Aaron. In that one act the entire Jewish ritual, with the doctrine which it upheld and propagated, proceeded by a divine interference attested in a miracle from above, exactly as in the Person of our Lord and from His sacrificial act as Redeemer the whole Christian hierarchy and the doctrine which it upbears came forth from the God and Father of all. Under this example, and as an instance of power coming from above, St. Clement places the conduct of the Apostles in determining the appointment and the succession of rulers in the Church. “And our Apostles knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife over the dignity of the episcopate. For this cause, therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, and they established a succession that, if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their liturgic function.”
Thus before the end of the first century we have a historical statement of the universal and regular appointment of bishops throughout the world by the Apostles in consequence of “complete foreknowledge received” from our Lord Himself. The principle on which they proceeded is clearly defined; the generation of the Christian people from a hierarchy existing before itself is marked out. This is said to be in accordance with ancient prophecy, and follows the great example of God, who created by the hand of Moses the order of the Aaronic priesthood, the precursor and preparer of the Christian, in which it was merged, when the High Priest at length appeared and consummated the act which the whole Jewish ritual was formed to symbolise.
In all this statement St. Clement not merely confirms the scriptural record, but he supplies those details which it enveloped in general heads. Titus and Timotheus are instances of episcopal appointment in the writings of St. Paul, and the bishops or angels of the seven Churches in the Apocalypse; but here the appointment is recorded as general, as everywhere carried out by the Apostles in each city according to the special instruction of our Lord.