Joseph Smith, Ignatius, and High Councils “According to the Ancient Order”

 

Jesus surrounded by His Twelve Apostles; Rome Temple Visitor's Center.

In 1834, Joseph Smith organized the first High Council in this dispensation. At this time, the Quorum of the Twelve had not yet been organized (that would happen a year later), and the Kirtland “Stake Presidency” (to use a slightly anachronistic term) consisted of the First Presidency of the Church — Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams.

During this meeting, Joseph Smith turned to the High Council and remarked that “the Council was organized according to the ancient order, and also according to the mind of the Lord.”[1] With this statement, Joseph made clear that the High Council was a significant part of ancient Church organization.

Of course, one would look through the New Testament in vain for a reference to the “high council” using the same terminology employed by Latter-day Saints. Hints, however, are present — especially when viewed in light of Joseph Smith’s other revelations. For example, shortly after the Twelve Apostles were called and set apart, the Lord declared, “The Twelve are a Traveling Presiding High Council, to officiate in the name of the Lord, under the direction of the Presidency of the Church, agreeable to the institution of heaven” (Doctrine and Covenants 107:33). Just as the High Council of a given stake was to be under the direction of a local presidency, so too would the Twelve be directed by the First Presidency of the Church.

This apparent mirroring of local authority (a high council) to the Apostleship is actually not without precedent in the ancient church. Ignatius of Antioch, in several letters he composed to various churches, repeatedly encourages those churches to heed their local authorities while he is on his way to a martyr’s death. In these epistles, he also repeatedly refers to local authorities of the Christian church as representative of higher Church authorities. For Ignatius, the local Bishop was comparable to God the Father, and a local “council of presbyters” was related to the council of twelve apostles. Ignatius variously wrote,

“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.” (Ignatius to the Magnesians 6:1)

“Respect the bishop, who is a model of the Father, and the presbyters as God's council and as the band of the apostles.” (Ignatius to the Trallians 3:1)

“Ι have taken refuge in the gospel as the flesh of Jesus and in the apostles as the council of presbyters of the church.” (Ignatius to the Philadelphians 5:1; see 7:1 for a mention of the local bishop and council of presbyters)[2]

In two other instances these comparisons can be seen implicitly.[3] While some variation does occur between the organization of local units anciently and modernly, the overarching comparison is the same: there was a local council of leaders that was deliberately modelled after the apostleship. And, even though Ignatius does not detail what this local council did, which puts important limitations to consider on any conclusion drawn from these remarks, the pattern of organization is clearly present.

From here, two points are worth considering.

First, some variation is entirely permissible within the context of how the Church has been organized in antiquity and in modernity. The organization of the Church in this dispensation was done piecemeal; keep in mind that the Apostles were not called until 1835, and the first Quorum of the Seventy were not recognized as General Authorities until 1975.[4] The organization of the ancient church appears to have likewise been done piecemeal: it was not until after Jesus had died that seven assistants for the Twelve are called (analogous in many ways to the Seven Presidents of the Seventy) in Acts 6. It is possible, too, that the way terms are used today varied slightly in their ancient context: a bishop, for instance, may have been more comparable to a Stake President, overseeing a whole city of Saints who met in multiple congregations and house-churches, whereas today a bishop primarily oversees a single congregation (this, too, was a development that arose after the murder of Joseph Smith).[5]

Second, the question may rightfully be asked: what is a presbyter? It is a term that, for Latter-day Saints, is not used over the pulpit. The answer, however, can be found in how it has typically been translated, namely, as “elder.”[6] Indeed, the underlying Greek presbuteros is quite typical in the New Testament. It is at this point that more connections between apostles and a council of elders can be seen. (The word itself often referred to members of a local council of leaders in the Septuagint as well — not entirely unlike Ignatius’s meaning here.)[7]

According to Doctrine and Covenants 20:38, “an apostle is an elder.” Similarly, in 1 Peter 5:1, Peter refers to himself as a sumpresbuteros, or “fellow-elder,” and 2 John 1 and 3 John 1 refer to the Apostle John as a presbuteros. Thus, it could be said that all apostles are elders, but not all elders are apostles — and in the case of Ignatius, a council of elders given authority of a local church mirrored the council of elders over the entire church. This can give some additional context to some of Paul’s instructions to Titus to “ordain elders in every city” in close connection with the bishop (see Titus 1:5–7). Among these elders, it is possible that it included organizing a local council of presbyters. Extending this any further, however, would be an argument from silence, so we will let this matter suffice for the time being.

What is ultimately most interesting regarding this, however, can be summed up simply by a phrase adapted from Hugh Nibley: “Time vindicates the Prophet.”[8] Just as Joseph Smith had made claims regarding an evangelist’s role as a patriarch in the ancient church that, upon closer investigation, bears considerable weight in Joseph’s favor, so too does his comment regarding the High Council bear weight when considered in light of Ignatius’s letters.[9] Time and study vindicate the Prophet’s remarks, and an argument could be made that such a high council was indeed established “according to the ancient order.”

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[1] Minutes, 19 February 1834, p. 37, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-19-february-1834/2.

[2] These translations are taken from Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Baker Academic, 2007).

[3] These are Ignatius to the Trallians 2:2 and Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 8:1.

[4] See John Tvedtnes, Organize My Kingdom: A History of the Restored Priesthood (Bountiful, UT: Cornerstone Publishing, 2000), 255–56.

[5] See Tvedtnes, Organize My Kingdom, 219–25.

[6] See Frederick William Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. πρεσβύτερος.

[7] See Joshua 20:4; Ruth 4:2; 2 Esdras 10:14; Judith 8:10; 10:6.

[8] This is adapted from the title of thirty lectures delivered by Hugh Nibley, “Time Vindicates the Prophets,” and later published as The World and the Prophets.

[9] For a discussion on the evangelist in the ancient church, see Scripture Central, “What Is an Evangelist? (Ephesians 4:11),” KnoWhy 692 (October 5, 2023); John W. Welch, “Word Studies from the New Testament,” Ensign, January 1995.