Critical Interpretation of Hans Kung s Historical Analysis of the Development of the Hierarchical Church
There are many groups of people that make up the hierarchical structure of the church. The congregation is definitely the biggest part of the church, but they don’t make up the entire church. The congregation, deacons, priests, and bishops together make up the church. ... The leaders of the early church were the apostles. In contrast to the church today they based their ideas around equality, even among the leaders. This brings up the question should we or should we not have authoritative leaders of the church today? Is the leadership within the church a hostile being? Kung accepts the fact that there needs to be a leader, but he does not like the term hierarchy to be part of it. “Thus what we have here is service of the church and not hierarchy. Slowly the word got around in the Catholic Church of our day that this term means holy rule” (P 8). ... Once Paul died Kung states that the institutionalization was unavoidable, meaning that a structured church with a hierarchy was going to occur no matter what. ... I believe the origin of hierarchy in the church is prevalent at this point because this is when the first division between clergy and the congregation took place.