Bishop

Shepherd and overseer of souls

‘Bishop’ comes, through Latin, from episkopos (ἐπίσκοπος), one who watches over others. Paul greeted the church at Philippi "together with the overseers and deacons" (Philippians 1:1), and set out for Timothy what such a man must be:

This is a trustworthy saying: If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble task. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,

1 Timothy 3:1-2

In the New Testament the overseers are the elders. Paul tells the elders of Ephesus that the Holy Spirit has made them "overseers" (Acts 20:28), and Titus speaks of elders and overseers in one breath (Titus 1:5-7). Philippi had several overseers. Above them all is the true overseer: Peter calls Christ "the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls" (1 Peter 2:25).

How the church came to say it

In the second century the bishop became one leader over a church's presbyters and deacons. Around 110 Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, urged the churches again and again to be united around bishop, presbyters and deacons, and wrote that where the bishop is, there the people should be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8. Around 180 Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, argued against false teachers that in the churches the apostles founded, bishops in unbroken order had taught the same apostolic faith Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3. Later the bishop came to oversee the churches of a city and its region, and the great councils, Nicaea among them, were gatherings of bishops.

At the Reformation the churches dealt with the office differently. The Church of England kept its bishops Thirty-Nine Articles, art. 36, and Lutheran churches in places such as Sweden kept bishops too. Reformed and Presbyterian churches, holding that bishop and elder are one office in the New Testament, placed government in assemblies of elders. In the late eighteenth century American Methodists also set apart bishops, and Korean Methodists have bishops today.

Where the traditions differ

The Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican churches treasure an unbroken succession of bishops, by the laying on of hands, from the apostles, as a sign that guards the church's unity and apostolic faith. The Catholic Church teaches that the bishops, in communion with the pope as Peter's successor, succeed to the college of the apostles Catechism of the Catholic Church. Many Lutheran and Methodist churches that have bishops understand that succession in their own ways.

Reformed and Presbyterian churches, seeing bishop and elder as one office, are governed by elders together rather than by a single bishop (see the lesson Presbyterian church government). Baptist and Congregational churches regard each congregation's pastors as its overseers (congregational polity). They read Ignatius as a witness to an order that took shape after the apostles. Yet every tradition agrees that those who oversee must lead "not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:3), and that Christ himself is the church's true shepherd and overseer. See also the lessons What the church is and After the apostles: the apologists and Irenaeus.