Governance in the First-century Christian Church in Rome: Was It Collegial?

My previous essay in this series' drew attention to three main areas of inquiry concerning church governance in the first-century church in Rome: (1) an ancient Roman political governance pattern which may have furnished a background for the type of ecclesiastical governance used in that first-century Christian community, (2) pertinent contemporary Christian documents, and (3) ancient non-contemporary information from Roman episcopal succession lists. In addition, we observed that certain crucial issues emerged from the data of the different succession lists, particularly the question of the sequential placement of Clement of Rome in the postapostolic succession and the dates for his episcopal tenure. With regard to the Roman system of governance, we found that the collegiality pattern of the magistracies in the Roman Republic (508-27 B.c.) was carried over into the Principate (the form of government established in 27 B.c.) and that it continued to be held in high esteem in Rome itself and in the West during the first century A.D. This was so in spite of the fact that the princeps, or "first citizen," had become the leading figure in the Roman government. We noted, for example, that Octavian (Augustus): the founder of the Principate, ruled by means of offices and authorities carried over or derived from the Roman Republic; that he declined several offers of offices that would have given him autocratic power; and that among his first-century successors the ones who ruled autocratically received at death the official execra-