Yeah my question is primarily directed at Presbyterians, but I want answers from anyone so that I can be helped to think through this.
I was under the impression that most Presbyterians limit the office of teacher so that they cannot administer sacraments. But if I remember correctly, that is the Scottish position and so I guess many may differ here.
But I guess what I'm primarily wondering is this: where do we go in Scripture in order to reason this out? Like how exactly would you respond to the line of thinking among early Baptists that the great commission is given to preaching disciples so that everyone who is authorized to preach is therefore authorized to administer the sacraments since it seems the administration of the sacraments is a sort of visible form of preaching and as even Turretin points out, tied to preaching. The biblical evidence for any position feels rather limited to me and it makes it very difficult. And I guess I'm trying to make sense of their argument that preaching is in a way "higher" than the sacraments and so it seems if one can do that, then they have the authority to do the lesser.
And I guess as an aside, what do you think of this:
https://archive.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/61/61-2/JETS_61.2_355-366_Strickland.pdf the early church evidence has always kept me questioning about what I think on this issue since it seems they did not really care that much about who was baptizing and there doesn't seem to be a clear limiting of the baptizer to elders until after Nicea.
I'm using as my standard the BCO I'm familiar with, which distinguishes between particular calling/emphasis a ministerial (pastor's) ordination confers without dividing the office itself according to "essentials." The one office is made up of all the essentials for ministry in that office. If another church body ordains a man to be a Teacher, and does not authorize him to administer sacraments, then a Teacher is not a
species of the general office of Minister in their polity, but must be its own office.
I don't believe Christ proclaims the Great Commission to an undifferentiated crowd who are all of exactly the same condition within his kingdom. Some present were male, others female, which demands one kind of differentiation. Some present were apostles, and most others were not (as I take the GC event, taking place in Galilee, as 1) distinct from the Ascension event which happened near Jerusalem (Mt.Olivet), and 2) as the gathering Paul refers to in 1Cor.15:6 when there was over 500 persons). That everyone present on the occasion were "disciples" merely shows that there is a base-level identity or office belonging to everyone in the kingdom; it does not imply that there are no further evidences of distinctions.
Jesus spoke that day to the nascent gathered church, so what he disposed to the church became the responsibility of the body. However, that body was not simply a blob of cells, but a real body with limbs, instruments, special organs, and executive functions. It does not follow--unless one starts with a different conception of the church and its organization--that every word spoken by the Lord on that day was uttered without any concern (for such trivial matters? as some might suppose) for the variety of stations and callings represented in the assembly.
Let me try an analogy, by way of explaining why (some of us think) recognizing the ability to teach holy truth or even licensing to preach, does not carry along with it the authorization to administer sacraments. If you are permitted (licensed) entrance to the Library, you are free to read the books of the Library. But you may not be equally free to take books from the Library, despite having gained the fundamental access. As a local citizen, the Library may belong to you in some sense; but you still don't have authorization to do in and with the Library as you please. The Library Card is a true license to read, to take out (with a promise to return), and perhaps post your reviews of the Library's material.
Having a Library Card does not confer the right to issue Library Cards. Having the LC is one way of getting others interested in joining the Library and getting LCs of their own. The LC with its information is not a "complex read," but instead a very simple device; yet it is "packed" with all the information of the Library. Is it in the interest of the Library managers to allow this "sign" may be casually distributed by any prior Card-holder to anyone he sees fit? Is not the LC holder a veritable missionary for the Library? Does he not sing its praises on every street? When next he comes to the door of the Library, shouldn't the staff eagerly welcome him and an accompanying crowd of curiosity-seekers all waving their LCs which he issued them (all in the Library's name)?
The books, and more importantly the books' contents, are the essence of the Library. Zeal and even skill in conveying the value of the Library, in conveying a description of the books, in rehearsing some of the rich content from the books; and above all, being recognized by the Library as an asset--yet for all of this, the bestowal of a LC belongs to the office of the Librarian. The paperwork for a LC is distributed from the circulation desk. It is turned in filled out at the same place it was issued; and from the Library comes the sign of belonging. Your locally issued LC may not be enough to allow you the same liberties in the library the next town over--those sorts of arrangements require networking between the Libraries.
Analogies are imprecise comparisons. But let's try to boil down some of those comparisons I intended to make between the institutions of the Church and the Library. Words (in packages) are close to the essence of each. The Bible is one book, or conversely it is a library between two covers; and those who preach the Bible's content are its missionaries, official and unofficial. You don't always need a LC to make use of your local Library, but you typically do need a LC if you intend to parade any of the Library's physical books as an advertisement, or if you mean to prove your legitimacy as an apostle for the Library. Hence, the analogy between a license to preach and a license to check books out. In both cases, some form of recognition has been obtained from the institution. But though the content of the message is essential, authorization to bear that content for distribution does not automatically carry with it a full authorization to grant signs of membership, signs packed with the whole content of the Library (as it were).
The LC is not "more than" the books of the Library. But it does not follow that being "less than" the books means those who have certain freedom to and with the books also must have the power to give the LC-sign. A proper sign is the property of the institution issuing it, as baptism is the property of the church. Preaching, too, is properly the church's ownership, and not a private possession. Licensing to preach--as distinguished from ordination to office--is recognition the church wills to grant some party, admitting sufficient gift on display in rhetoric or argument or just spiritual effect. This license is commonly a prelude to investment by the same party in actual office by ordination. Which ordination carries along with it: the power of the church to give its signs, the sacraments by the hands of the preacher.
In the article you linked, I find this sentence on top of the third page: "the source of the baptizer’s authority to baptize was a concern by the early second century." The language seems plain enough: that
inside of a century of the apostles, possibly within a single generation of the death of the last apostle, the church (through its leaders) was writing and discussing a potentially vexed question about baptismal authority. Not so important was the figure of the baptizer, but rather if the church (by a lawful agent) was in fact baptizing. In other words, it doesn't appear to me that the church in its original form under direct living apostolic oversight was vexed with questions of authority; but as soon as they left the scene, examples arose of taking the sign of Christian identity (baptism) outside of the church's supervision. So then, how ought the church to respond? This question further bled over into questions that arose from church-divisions, from controversies such as the Donatists fomented on account of "lapsed bishops" and the effect their failure might have on those who had taken their mark of identity from them.
Tertullian is certainly an author who must be studied and reckoned with, but he cannot be judged without admission of his at-times heterodox positions. That he asserts: "even laymen have the right; for what is equally received can be equally given.... Baptism, which is equally God's property, can be administered by all," must be qualified both by the deference he clearly shows to the church institute and its officers; as well as his known willingness to write confidently his own opinions. Who did he provide as instances of his theory? This is just as much an argument from silence as the author's conclusion that, despite Tertullian's scorn of "baptism" done by any woman, yet "However, there was no explicit command that one baptized by a woman be rebaptized." Perhaps Tertullian thought it superfluous to write an extra line? He clearly thought "there is no small peril to those that undertake it.. it is dangerous..., wicked and impious." So, why does the author not conclude Tertullian might have insisted any such persons (he merely suggests a thing like it could have happened) be piously and safely baptized?
There is simply massive presumptions made of supposed widespread approval of baptisms done by almost anyone, so long as the church figured out some way to sanction them; all made on the narrowest of historical appeal. Somehow, the church went from laissez-faire to furious micro-management in about one century? I find this analysis tendentious, but perhaps mine is as well.... I regard the context of Cyprian's statements as one in which the decline of standards makes re-asserting those (ancient) standards paramount. Insistence on the oversight of the presbyters in the matter of baptism should not be viewed (in my opinion) as strictly the imposition of a new centralization; but witness to the importance of the church as the sphere and its ministry as vital to questions of legitimacy. By the fourth century, theological and ecclesiastical crisis has forced plain statements of who may baptize (or under whose authority) from men like Basil, speaking of clergy judged to have lapsed, became "laymen, possessed the power neither of baptizing nor of ordaining,... [those being] baptized by laymen, [ought] come to the Church and be purified by the true baptism of the Church." Though there are cases he relents to allow such a baptism to stand, it is not because it was a lay-baptism, but because the baptisms had been done innocently through the auspices of the church.
The bottom line for me is a conclusion quite different from the article's author, that from the NT and writing such as Didache, that there is a "practical indifference toward the baptizer continued throughout the early centuries of the Christian church, with notable exceptions." He makes of the absence of identifying the majority of the baptizers by name or by office into
proof the matter began as an
adiophoron. I cannot see why he should reason thus, other than he begins with a very different
a priori than do I. I do not accept that the early church is marked by a condition of relative laxity in doctrine and practice, and organizational fluidity. I neither accept Rome's (and the EO) perspective: that Jesus instantiated the hierarchical form of prelacy and bestowed all of Rome's (etc.) theories of doctrine and practice hence preserved; nor do I accept the evolutionary hypothesis that supposes a diffuse succession or diverse "schools" of various disciples of Jesus, eventually by gravity or by force being brought into uniformity of doctrine and practice by a centralized creation after several centuries of wild-flower growth.
That some baptizers are not identified should make us attentive to those men who ARE identified. We should be concerned to note that the pattern of the church was to verify the conduct of matters like baptism, and to see whether or not the church (with permission of Christ and his Spirit) should recognize the power and grace of God. This is the exact manner of the church in Act.8, when report was made to Jerusalem of the excitement in Samaria. They sent two apostles thence to judge the work and its merit; which resulted in approval, and the church's extension of its recognition and authority over the establishment of a Samaritan outpost. There is no "indifference" at all to who conducted the labor, even if the greater focus of the narrative is on the expansion of the church and the inclusion (by then) of half-Jews by the thousands. If the text of Holy Scripture does not care to explain who performed the baptism, it may not be concluded that it is of no matter who (or under which authority) said baptism comes. What is the ecclesiology, the theology of the church and of the sacraments, as it comes forth from Scripture?
Why do men conclude various matters of the church are of no practical significance, unless they have the most explicit, positive warrant? It is their
a priori, their stance before they even come to the pages of the Bible. I myself have
a prioris, which I admit and consent to having. I think it inconceivable that Jesus did not care if his kingdom organization was haphazard and ad hoc, and only took form as history and the needs of the hour dictated. I think it is absurd to begin by imagining the church was originally a wild and unruly place--but also a pure, innocent, pristine-primitive culture--which over time got infested with a rules-culture and a demanding conformity per dogma-doctrine. Jesus is a King who set up a kingdom, and runs it as he has for almost 2K yrs. according to a strong pattern set down once for all in the NT, but not without roots in the OT that aid in shaping and stabilizing the NT superstructure.
