Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Hastings Dictionary of the Bible: Evangelist
Subjects in this Topic:
EVANGELIST (‘one who proclaims good tidings’ [‘evangel,’ ‘gospel’]).—The word occurs 3 times in NT (Act_21:8, Eph_4:11, 2Ti_4:5), and in each case with reference to the proclamation of the Christian gospel.
Act_21:8 gives what appears to be the primary Christian use of the word. Philip, one of the Seven (cf. Act_6:1-6), is there called ‘the evangelist.’ And how he obtained this title is suggested when we find that immediately after Stephen’s martyrdom he went forth from Jerusalem and ‘preached the gospel’ (literally evangelized) in Samaria, in the desert, and in all the cities of the coast-land between Azotus and Cæsarea (Act_8:4-5; Act_8:12; Act_8:25; Act_8:35; Act_8:40). In the first place, then, the evangelist was a travelling Christian missionary, one who preached the good news of Christ to those who had never heard it before.
In Eph_4:11 Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are all named as gifts bestowed on the Church by the ascended Christ. It is impossible to distinguish these 5 terms as referring to so many fixed ecclesiastical offices. There is no ground, e.g., for thinking that there was an order of pastors and another of teachers in the early Church. St. Paul, again, while discharging the exceptional functions of the Apostolate, was himself the prince of evangelists and the greatest of Christian teachers. We conclude, therefore, that the evangelist as such was not an official, but one who, without having the higher powers of Apostleship or prophecy, or any special talent for teaching or pastoral work, had a gift for proclaiming the gospel as a message of saving love—a gift which was chiefly exercised, no doubt, by moving as Philip had done from place to place.
That ‘evangelist’ denotes function and not special office is confirmed by 2Ti_4:5. Timothy is exhorted to ‘do the work of an evangelist,’ but also to engage in tasks of moral supervision and patient doctrinal instruction (2Ti_4:2-3) which suggest the settled pastor and stated teacher rather than the travelling missionary. In his earlier life, Timothy, as St Paul’s travel-companion (Act_16:1 ff; Act_19:22; Act_20:4, Rom_16:21 etc.), had been an evangelist of the journeying type. But this passage seems to show that there is room for the evangelist at home as well as abroad, and that the faithful minister of Christ, in order to ‘make full proof of his ministry,’ will not only watch over the morals of his flock and attend to their upbuilding in sound doctrine, but seek to win outsiders to Christ by proclaiming the gospel of His grace.
The special use of ‘evangelist’ in the sense of an author of a written ‘Gospel’ or narrative of Christ’s life, and specifically the author of one of the four canonical Gospels, is much later than the NT, no instance being found till the 3rd century.
J. C. Lambert.