Assuming the historical trustworthiness of the Acts and the Pastoral
Epistles, we have evidence that the laying-on of apostolic hands was the method
of imparting the gift of the Spirit. It was also, as a natural consequence, the
method of ordination to church office. So the seven are ordained, Acts vi. 6 προσευξαμενοι επεθηκαν
αυτοις τας
χειρας. So Paul and Barnabas have hands laid on them
by the prophets of Antioch, Acts xiii. 3—this however to send them on a special
mission, rather than appoint them to an office. So St. Paul, in company with the
presbytery ordained Timothy (1 Tim. vi. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6), and he writes to him
that he ‘stir up the gift that is in him by the laying-on of hands.’ He also
implies that Timothy will use the same ceremony in ordaining other clergy (1
Tim. v. 22). Thus, as in the case of baptism, the Church gave a new meaning, a
new reality, to an old Jewish rite.
It was not likely that an apostolic
practice would become disused. Ordination or appointment is, of course,
constantly mentioned without any specification of the method, in the early
Church as amongst ourselves. But we have in each century evidence to assure us of
what the method was.
Thus in the second century the
Ebionite Clementines represent St. Peter as ordaining bishops, and by implication
priests and deacons, by laying-on of hands (Hom. iii. 72, with the prayer
that God would give the bishop the authority to bind and loose aright; Recog.
iii. 66; Ep. Clem. 2.19).
In the third century we have evidence
that Origen was so ordained: επι
την Ελλαδα
στειλαμενος την
δια Παλαιστινης,
πρεσβυτεριου χειροθεσιαν
εν Καισαρεια
προς των
τηδε επισκοπων
αναλαμβανει (ap. Euseb. H. E.
vi. 23); and he implies that this was the method by which bishops were consecrated
in his day . . . , as will be seen immediately, and the African author of de Aleatoribus, assure us that his was the method
of episcopal ordination in Africa, and Novatian’s schismatical ordination lets
us see that it was so also at Rome. The canons of Hippolytus give us the same assurance in the case of all three
orders. . . . When Chrysostom, still later, is explaining the expression επεθηκαν αυτοις τας χειρας in Acts vi. 6 (Hom. xiv. 3),
he says: ‘This is the χειροντονια: the hand of the man is laid
upon the other; but all the working is of God, and His hand it is which touches
the head of him who is ordained, if he be ordained aright.’ Jerome too
interpreters χειροτονια in Latin as ‘extentus digitus,’ and explains it as ‘ordinatio
clericorum quae non solum ad imprecationem vocis sed ad impositonem impletur
manus’ (in Isai. lviii. 10).
In one of
these case is there any controversial stress laid on the rite. It is simply
assumed as the Church’s method of ordination.(Charles Gore, The
Church and the Ministry [5th ed.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902], 349-50)
