Elder and Overseer: One Office in the Early Church, The

Trinity Journal, Spring 2004 by Schnabel, Eckhard

Benjamin L. Merkle. The Elder and Overseer: One Office in the Early Church. Studies in Biblical Literature 57. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. xviii 183 pp. $62.95.

The title of Merkle's book, his revised doctoral dissertation written under the direction of M. A. Seifrid and submitted to Southern Seminary in 2002, formulates the thesis of the author: he seeks to demonstrate that the NT offices of the "elders" (presbyteroi) and of the "overseers" (episkopoi) are one and the same.

The first chapter ("History of Research," pp. 1-21) presents the scholarly discussion on the relationship of the role/office of elders and the role/office of the overseers in the literature of the NT, beginning with J. Jeremias's contention that the term presbyteroi, as used in the Pastoral Epistles, refers not to an office of church leaders but to "older men," to scholars who hold that there was one group of leaders in the local churches which are designated either as "elders" or "overseers." The bibliography of Merkle's discussion is generally up-to-date; a glaring omission is J. Roloff's Kirche im Neuen Testament (1993), a major recent monograph on NT ecclesiology.

In ch. 2 ("Background of the Terms 'Elder' and Overseer,'" pp. 23-65), Merkle surveys elders and overseers in the OT, in early Judaism, in the Greco-Roman world (with a discussion of inscriptions and papyri), and in the NT. He concludes with other scholars that the group of the elders in the NT is unique, while the office of the overseer may have taken its cue from the mebaqcjer of the Qumran community.

Chapter 3 ("'Office' in Paul's Letters to Churches," pp. 67-119) provides an extensive survey of the debate about "office" and "charisma" (pp. 67-90), before discussing "organized ministries in Paul's letters to churches." The latter section provides exegetical comments on relevant passages such as Gal 6:6; 1 Thess 5:12-13; 1 Cor 16:15-16; Rom 16:1-2; Phil 1:1; Col 1:7; 4:12,17; Eph 4:11; and non-Pauline texts such as Heb 13:7,17; 1 Pet 5:1-5; Jas 5:14. Merkle concludes that "traces of specific, organized ministries are found in every one of the churches to which Paul writes" and that "the Pauline churches had a definite organizational structure even at the earliest stage" (p. 118). The latter conclusion seems overstated, considering the variability of terms, the flexibility of situations, and the lack of specific knowledge concerning the question, for example, whether we have to reckon in Corinth, Ephesus, or Rome with one local congregation, with several independent house churches, or with a local congregation that consisted of individual house churches. R. Y. K. Fung, whom Merkle quotes extensively, is much more cautious (pp. 118-19 n. 150).

In ch. 4 ("Elder and Overseer in Acts and the Pastoral Epistles," pp. 1.21-61), Merkle discusses "elders" in Acts (Acts 11:30; 15:6; 14:23; 20:17-38) and "elders" and "overseers" in the Pastoral Epistles (Titus 1:5-9; 1 Tim 3:1-7; 5:17-25), providing exegetical comments and discussion of scholarly opinions. He concludes that the organizational structure that we observe in the Pastoral Epistles is not as advanced as often suggested. While Merkle allows the possibility that there may have been a single overseer, he argues that the evidence favors the view that only some of the elders, those involved in preaching and teaching, were considered overseers, suggesting that "it is best to see the two designations of elder and overseer as referring to the same office" (p. 160). Merkle ends with a few comments on "implications for today" (pp. 160-61): the church should be governed by only two" offices, viz. elders/overseers and deacons; the leadership of the church should consist of a plurality of leaders; the elders/overseers should be viewed as equal in status. Unfortunately, the book includes neither Scripture, subject, nor author indexes.

Merkle's study provides a helpful summary of several fundamental debates concerning NT ecclesiology. Most if not all of the arguments and conclusions are well known. For the book to be a definitive study of the office of the elder/overseer, it would have been imperative to provide a systematic profile of the function(s) and task(s) of the elders, based on the exegesis of the relevant texts, including a tradition-historical study of terms such as episkopos, presbyteros, and poimen.

Eckhard Schnabel

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School