Most Protestants I know claim the offices of presbyter/bishop are basically identical from their reading of the NT. What is the NT evidence for the Catholic position for a more three fold office of ministry, with a bishop being a presbyter but not vice-versa?

Thanks all!

A 'presbyter' is a priest.....the word used in the NT for 'bishop' (if it isn't translated 'bishop') is usually translated as 'elder' or 'overseer'

The threefold ministry is

Deacon priest bishop

The diaconate is established in Acts chapter 6, where the apostles set aside 7 men to distribute the collection to widows

The duties of deacons and bishops are described in 1 Timothy 3:1-13

Even within the writing of the New Testament, a clear distinction emerged. Both bishops and priests are members of the presbyteriate (1 Pet. 5), but there are those who clearly have the position of "overseers", i.e., bishops, who are in charge of multiple Christian communities and ordain their priests or "elders".

Of course, modern liberal scholarship claims that all the writings referring to 'overseer' are forgeries and date form the middle to late second century rather than the first....this is largely because Protestant scholars in the late 19th century wanted to find a way to downplay the position of 'bishop' and claim that it is a late, non-apostolic development.

The funny this is that few seem to notice the circularity....the bishopric must be a late development because it is only mentioned in these writings which are late, and we know that the writings must be late because they mention the office of bishop, which we know to be a late development. Huh? Somehow this reasoning passes the muster in graduate programs?

Yup, it reminds me of when I was a boy and first started getting interested in religious belief. I had only ever gone to a southern Baptist church and wondered why, when their bible clearly stated what things like the Lord's Supper really was, that they did not seem to teach or believe that. The first Catholic priest I ever talked to just smiled and said, "I think the more you look into the ancient faith, Gregory, the more you will come to realize that we are the original 'Bible Believing' Church."

Yes it is. Sacred Scripture is easy as a Catholic; it says what it means and it means what it says.

For me, it came down to the fact that Catholics acknowledged and explained things that I had noticed for years but never understood why...

For example...pretty much everyone admits that of the 12 apostles, the one who is given the most attention in the gospels, and frankly the only one who seems to have a distinct personality, is Peter. I always wondered 'why does Peter get all the attention?' Then when I heard that he was the leader of the apostles and the first Pope, finally it made sense. 'Sot that's why 90% of the time the gospels focus on Peter to the exclusion of all the other apostles!'

Right and that is another example that helped me cross the Tiber. Even at a young age, I wondered why and how, there could be such convoluted explanations for what Matthew 16 really meant, i.e., "pebbles" and "rocks", etc. It was so much easier from a Catholic perspective; it means....simply what it says.

Well the biggest problem with all the convoluted explanations is that they all basically say that Jesus didn't really mean that Peter was the rock.....in which case....why give him the name 'rock'? Was it an ironic nickname, like calling a 7 foot tall guy 'shorty' or calling the 300 pound guy 'tiny'? What's the point of calling someone 'rock' if your point is to say that he's NOT a rock?

The word "bishop" is actually "episcopus" in Latin. This is derived from Greek episkopos "overseer" (epi = over and skopos = watcher).

...and then giving him the keys to the kingdom of heaven and telling him that, "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Odd that.

I liked Aidan Nichols' book on this subject. What I basically remember is: perhaps during NT times, the distinction indeed wasn't so clear, because the ministry of the apostles was still active. But, you do clearly see in the NT certain elders having a ministry that sets them apart from other elders. Namely, James seems to have some kind of single headship in Jerusalem; Titus was instructed to appoint elders in Crete (Titus 1:5); and Timothy can be presumed to have had the same duty in Ephesus, since he was given instructions for how to select elders.

After the passing of the apostles, this structure coalesced into the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons.

Heck until very recently many theologians considered the priesthood one order, with priest/bishop distinct grades within the order. The other orders being deacon, subdeacon, etc.

There really is no problem saying that both bishops and priests are priests. I don't think it was that the distinction was that unclear, but priest is a case of an analogous name, here a name common to both, is used also specifically for one. Here name that is common is reserved specifically for the imperfect, and a new name is given to the perfect. Which is a common use of analogy.

There are parallelograms, rhombi, and squares.

Sometimes we call a square a rhombus is 4 right angles. Other times, we distinguish the two, and use rhombus for parallelograms with all 4 sides equal and not at right angles. The name of the genus is used as a proper name for one set of the genus, namely not squares.

It is correct that there is a bit of overlap between episkopos and presbyteros (although the case seems to be a bit exaggerated), but it is also correct that these words hadn’t been given a technical definition. The word diakonos just meant ‘servant,’ but it got a technical definition. The question is this: What structure does the New Testament provide? It seems to me that, given the ‘equality’ between episkopos and presbyteros, the New Testament gives three orders: Apostles, bishops/presbyters, and deacons. Early on in Church history, the successors of the apostles assumed the name of ‘bishop,’ while their ‘subordinates’ assumed the name of ‘presbyter’ (‘priest’). It seems to me that this was done to (1) differentiate between the Apostles (the twelve and Paul) and their successors, and (2) differentiate between the successors of the Apostles and their subordinates (‘bishops’ and ‘presbyters’).

So the three orders of Apostle, bishop-priest and deacon continued as bishop, priest and deacon. (Assuming, of course, that there is a significant overlap, almost an identity between bishop and priest in the New Testament, an assumption I doubt.)

Well, I may not know much about the exact state of the evidence currently, but one thing I do know is that modern scholars propose that in the very early Church, dioceses were run by a committee of the leading clergy in the city, and that in these committees everyone was equal and no one was 'in charge', the committee had no chairman, everything was done collectively.

And I'll tell you right out, that's a load of crap. A committee where everyone is equal and no one is the chairman, cannot accomplish anything, EVER. It certainly cannot run all the churches in a major city like Rome, Jerusalem or Antioch. A committee with no chairman is going to spend all of its time arguing with each other (or worse, just sitting around shooting the breeze and not getting any work done at all) and will never actually come to a decision. The only way that a committee can accomplish anything is if someone steps up and says 'okay, the debate is over, now we're going to vote', and who spends the entire meeting insisting that the committee follow a certain agenda which is decided on before hand. The person who steps up to the plate and does this is called 'the chairman'....and if this is how dioceses actually were run in the very early Church, where all the clergy had one big meeting, which seems at least possible, then the guy who stepped to the plate and said 'okay, the debate is over, now we're going to vote', the guy who set the agenda for the meeting and insisted that everyone else must follow it....was the bishop.

Profundity and its profoundest that

Fr. Jules Lebreton (The Emergence of the Church in the Roman World. New York: Collier Books, 1942, p. 42) gives the opinion that in the first-century Church the titles of bishop and presbyter were used for one office (that of a simple priest), citing St. Jerome (In Tit. i, 5; Migne, P.L., xxvi, p. 562) and St. John Chrysostom(Hom. I, in Phil, i). He says a lot more than that, but in this short space I'll leave it at that.

In the passage cited, St. Chrysostom writes:

To the fellow-Bishops and Deacons. What is this? Were there several Bishops of one city? Certainly not; but he called the Presbyters so. For then they still interchanged the titles, and the Bishop was called a Deacon. For this cause in writing to Timothy, he said, Fulfil your ministry, when he was a Bishop. For that he was a Bishop appears by his saying to him, Lay hands hastily on no man (1 Tim. 5:22). And again, Which was given you with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery (4:14). Yet Presbyters would not have laid hands on a Bishop. And again, in writing to Titus, he says, For this cause I left you in Crete, that you should appoint elders in every city, as I gave you charge. If any man is blameless, the husband of one wife (Tit. 1:5-6); which he says of the Bishop. And after saying this, he adds immediately, For the Bishop must be blameless, as God's steward, not self willed (1:7). So then, as I said, both the Presbyters were of old called Bishops and Deacons of Christ, and the Bishops Presbyters; and hence even now many Bishops write, To my fellow-Presbyter, and, To my fellow-Deacon. But otherwise the specific name is distinctly appropriated to each, the Bishop and the Presbyter.

I bolded the part that Lebreton refers to, but in context it seems the Doctor is saying pretty much what others have said above.

As I’ve said, it is pretty much a question of terminology. The question we should ask: How many ‘levels of authority’ do we find in the New Testament? The answer, it seems to me, is three: apostle (and later bishop), presbyter (or prebyter/bishop) and deacon. The successors of the Apostles assumed the name of ‘bishop’ (which just means overseer), and their subordinates assumed the name of ‘prebyter’ or ‘priest.’