"THE EARLY CHURCH HAD NO HIERARCHY": TRACING A MODERN MYTH TO ITS IRISH ROOTS

If you've ever discussed Catholic ecclesiology with evangelical Protestants, you've likely heard some version of this claim: "The early church had no hierarchy. It was just believers gathering around the Word. The Catholic system of bishops, priests, and deacons came later - probably around Constantine - as a corruption of primitive Christianity."

This assertion is so common in evangelical circles that many assume it's true. I certainly did during my Young Life years and even into my time at Dallas Theological Seminary. But when I started reading the Church Fathers as I was entering the Catholic Church, I discovered something startling: the claim has no historical basis whatsoever. More surprisingly, I discovered where it actually originated - not with the Reformers, but with an Irish priest having a personal crisis in the 1820s.

MEET JOHN NELSON DARBY (1800-1882)

John Nelson Darby was a brilliant Anglo-Irish priest in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) who became disillusioned with institutional Christianity and founded the Plymouth Brethren movement. He's also the father of dispensationalism and the pretribulation rapture theory - theological innovations that profoundly shaped American evangelicalism through the Scofield Reference Bible and, later, the Left Behind series.

But what many don't know is that Darby also pioneered the theological claim that hierarchy itself is inherently unbiblical. This wasn't Reformation theology. Luther, Calvin, and the Anglicans all maintained some form of hierarchical church structure. Darby went far beyond them, arguing that the very concept of clergy was a sin against the Holy Spirit because it limited God's freedom to speak through any believer.

This radical ecclesiology didn't emerge from careful study of the early Church. It emerged from Irish politics and personal trauma.

THE IRISH CONTEXT: WHY DARBY BROKE

In the 1820s, Ireland was experiencing an extraordinary revival. Thousands of Irish Catholics were converting to Protestantism through the Church of Ireland - not primarily because of theological conviction, but because remaining Catholic meant political and economic exclusion under British rule. The British government required converts to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown and the Protestant succession.

Darby threw himself into this work with genuine pastoral zeal. He lived among the poor, learned Irish, and ministered tirelessly in rural County Wicklow. But something troubled him deeply: these conversions weren't entirely voluntary. They were coerced by British law.

Then came the crisis. In 1827, the Archbishop of Dublin announced that converts must swear the State Oath of Allegiance before being confirmed. Darby was horrified. He saw this as subordinating spiritual authority to political power - making the Church a tool of the British Empire. He wrote to the Archbishop, essentially accusing the Church of Ireland of spiritual prostitution.

The Archbishop's response was predictable: "Priest Darby, if you don't like how we do things, there's the door."

So Darby walked out. He left the Church of Ireland, left his priesthood, and rejected not just his denomination but the entire concept of institutional Christianity. If the problem was that churches become corrupted by power and politics, the solution wasn't to reform the church - it was to reject the very idea of church structure.

THE BIRTH OF ANTI-HIERARCHY THEOLOGY

This is where Darby's unique contribution enters Christian theology. He argued that:

This was genuinely novel. Luther retained bishops (at least in Sweden). Calvin had a presbyterian system. The Anglicans obviously kept the threefold order. Even the Anabaptists, who rejected infant baptism and were persecuted as radicals, still had recognized leaders and pastors.

Darby went further than any of them. He didn't just reject Catholic or Anglican hierarchy - he rejected the concept of ordained ministry itself.

And here's the crucial point: THIS CLAIM ABOUT THE EARLY CHURCH WAS MANUFACTURED TO JUSTIFY HIS BREAK WITH INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY. It wasn't based on historical research. It was theological necessity. If Darby was going to reject all churches, he needed a narrative in which all churches had been wrong for 1,800 years.

WHAT THE EVIDENCE ACTUALLY SHOWS

The problem with Darby's claim is that we have the actual writings of the early Church, and they unanimously contradict him.

Consider Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 107 AD. Ignatius was Bishop of Antioch, where believers were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). He knew the Apostle John personally. When he was arrested and sent to Rome for execution, he wrote letters to various churches. These letters survive, and they're devastating to Darby's thesis.

To the Magnesians: "Be eager to do everything in godly harmony, the bishop presiding in the place of God and the presbyters in the place of the council of the Apostles, and the deacons... entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ."

To the Trallians: "Everyone must show the deacons respect. They represent Jesus Christ... Likewise, everyone must respect the presbyters as they would the Apostles; and they must reverence the bishop as the image of the Father."

To the Smyrnaeans: "You must all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father... Let no one do anything of concern to the Church without the bishop. Only that Eucharist which is under the authority of the bishop may be considered certain."

This isn't 4th century Constantinian innovation. This is 107 AD - when people who knew the Apostles were still alive. And Ignatius isn't inventing this structure; he's describing it as established and normal.

Clement of Rome, writing even earlier (around 95 AD), describes the same threefold order and appeals to it as apostolic succession: "The Apostles received the Gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ... They appointed their first converts, after testing them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of future believers."

The Didache, a Christian manual from roughly 100 AD, gives instructions for "appointing bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord."

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 180 AD) provides lists of bishops in major cities going back to the Apostles and uses this succession as proof of authentic doctrine.

The historical evidence is overwhelming and unanimous: the early Church had a clear hierarchical structure of bishops, presbyters (priests), and deacons from the very beginning. This wasn't a later corruption. This was how the Apostles themselves organized the Church.

EVEN THE REFORMERS KNEW THIS

Here's what makes Darby's innovation so striking: the major Reformers knew this history and didn't claim otherwise.

Luther maintained bishops in the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia precisely because he saw episcopal structure as ancient and apostolic. Calvin's presbyterian system modified the hierarchy but didn't eliminate it - he had elders, ministers, and deacons, with clear lines of authority and accountability through church courts. The Anglicans explicitly retained the threefold order, arguing that it was primitive and biblical. Even the Anabaptists, who were radical on baptism and church-state separation, still had recognized pastors and church leaders.

The Reformers' critiques focused on papal authority, abuse of power, corruption, and theological errors - not on hierarchy as such. They were trying to reform the structure, not eliminate it.

Darby's claim that hierarchy itself was an innovation was something new in Christian history. And it required him to dismiss 1,700 years of unanimous Christian witness as corruption.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR APOLOGETICS

When Protestants claim "the early Church had no hierarchy," they're usually not aware they're channeling Darby rather than the Reformers, and certainly not the early Church itself. The claim has become so embedded in evangelical culture that people assume it's biblical and historical.

But tracing it to its origins exposes its weakness:

The historical evidence isn't ambiguous. From Clement to Ignatius to Irenaeus to Cyprian to Augustine, every early Christian writer who addresses church structure describes the same thing: bishops, presbyters, and deacons, in clear hierarchical relationship, traced back to apostolic appointment.

When the New Testament speaks of "elders" (presbyteroi) and "overseers" (episcopoi) and "deacons" (diakonoi), the early Church understood these as distinct offices in a structured ministry. Acts 14:23 says Paul and Barnabas "appointed elders in every church." 1 Timothy 3 gives qualifications for bishops and deacons. Titus 1:5 instructs Titus to "appoint elders in every town." James 5:14 says "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church."

This is structure. This is hierarchy. This is ordered ministry from the beginning.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Understanding that the "no hierarchy" claim originated with Darby - not with Scripture, not with the Fathers, not even with the Reformers - helps us see it for what it is: a 19th-century theological innovation born from Irish politics and personal crisis.

It's not ancient. It's not apostolic. It's not even Reformation theology. It's Darby's unique contribution, and it has no historical support. And it has caused chaos in the evangelical/protestant world.

When we trace theological claims to their origins, we often find they're not as old or as universal as we assumed. The "no hierarchy" position isn't the recovery of primitive Christianity. It's the invention of a new Christianity that would have been unrecognizable to Ignatius, Clement, Irenaeus, and every other Christian who lived before 1827.

We believe in hierarchy not because we're Catholic. The Church is hierarchical because that's how Christ structured it from the beginning - as the earliest post-apostolic writings definitively prove. The burden of proof lies with those claiming otherwise to explain why every single Christian writer for the first 1,800 years got it wrong and why it took an Irish priest in the 1820s to finally figure it out.

That's not historical theology. That's historical amnesia.