The Episcopate

• General:
  • Claudia Rapp: Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, (2005). University of California, 2005.
  • W. Telfer: The Office of a Bishop [in the Early Church], (1962). London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1962.

• "The bishop is the Church."
  • Fr. Alexander Schmemann: Ecclesiological Notes, (1967). SVS Quart. (11):35. A sophisticated discussion of the cosmic and sacramental character of the Church. --- Schmemann.Org

• Catholicity and equality of the episcopate:
  • The bishop of Rome and of the most obscure rural diocese are equally successors of the apostles:
    • St. Jerome, Ep. 146, i;

• Re: Priests:
  • "Priest" and "bishop" may have been interchangeable titles in the New Testament period:
    • Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 4:14; Titus 1:5-7; 1 Peter 5:1-2; 2 John 1; 3 John 1;
    • St. Jerome, Ep. 146, i;

  • A bishop is a chief of priests, elected from among his colleagues to provide leadership in the same way that a general is (or was in the later Roman Empire) a soldier elected to lead his fellow fighters:
    • St. Jerome, Ep. 146, i: (Jerome associates this idea particularly with Alexandria.)

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