“A Bishop and a Presbyter are the Same”
As noted in Part 1, Jerome claimed that presbyters and bishops were the same office, and that a time came when it was universally decreed in the church that one presbyter should preside over the others, in order to remove the seeds of schism.
Did Jerome deny the apostolic origins of the monarchical episcopate?
Following up on my article discussing the origin of episcopacy in the early church, this series of posts will discuss the well-known quotation of Jerome which seems to suggest that bishops arose out of the presbytery, and were not a separate office in the line of succession to the apostles, as argued in the article.
