Apostolic Succession

General Information

In its strict sense, apostolic succession refers to the doctrine by which the validity and authority of the Christian ministry is derived from the Apostles. Churches of the Catholic tradition hold that bishops form the necessary link in an unbroken chain of successors to the office of the apostles. The outward sign by which this connection is both symbolized and effected is the laying on of hands by the Bishop at ordination.

In its broader sense, apostolic succession refers to the relationship between the Christian church today and the apostolic church of New Testament times. Thus, apostolic succession refers to the whole church insofar as it is faithful to the word, the witness, and the service of the apostolic communities. Understood in this way, the church is not simply a collectivity of individual churches; instead, it is a communion of churches whose validity is derived from the apostolic message that it professes and from the apostolic witness that it lives.

Richard P. Mcbrien

Bibliography
Ehrhardt, Arnold, The Apostolic Succession in the First Two Centuries of the Church (1953); Kung, Hans, Papal Ministry in the Church (1971) and ed., Apostolic Succession (1968).

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Apostolic Succession

Advanced Information

This theory of ministry in the church did not arise before A.D. 170-200. The Gnostics claimed to possess a secret tradition handed down to them form the apostles. As a counterclaim the Catholic church pointed to each bishop as a true successor to the apostle who had founded the see and therefore to the truth the apostles taught. The bishop, as an authoritative teacher, preserved the apostolic tradition. He was also a guardian of the apostolic Scriptures and the creed. In a generation when the last links with the apostles were fast dying out this emphasis on apostolic teaching and practice was natural. In the third century the emphasis changed from the open successors of the apostles. This development owed much to the advocacy of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (248-58). Harnack regards this as a perversion rather than a development.

The terminology is not found in the NT. Diadoche ("succession") is absent from the NT and the LXX. There is little evidence for the idea in the NT (cf. II Tim. 2:2). All early succession lists were compiled late in the second century.

There is also a difference between the Roman-and Anglo-Catholic viewpoint. The former is a centralized autocracy with a papal succession traced back to Peter. The Tractarian teaches that all bishops alike, however insignificant the see, have equal power in a corporation. Thus an apostle transmitted to a bishop, through "the laying on of hands" and prayer, the authority which Christ had conferred on him. This theory of sacramental grace is a barrier to reunion in the Reformed churches, since the nonepiscopal bodies are regarded as defective in their ministry.

The weakness of the argument of The Apostolic Ministry (ed. K. E. Kirk) was its failure to explain the absence of the idea in the first two centuries of the Christian era. Ehrhardt does not supply the defect by postulating a priestly succession derived from the Judaizing church of Jerusalem as it laid stress on the new Isreal and the continuity of its priesthood. The idea was in the air in the second century.

Bishop Drury affirms that the apostles left behind them three things: their writings; the churches which they founded, instructed, and regulated; and the various orders of ministers for the ordering of these churches. There could be no more apostles in the original sense of that word. The real successor to the apostolate is the NT itself, since it continues their ministry within the church of God. Their office was incommunicable. Three kinds of succession are possible: ecclesiastical, a church which has continued from the beginning; doctrinal, the same teaching has continued throughout; episcopal, a line of bishops can be traced unbroken from early times. This does not necessarily mean that the episcopal office is the same as the apostolic.

(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
A Erhardt, The Apostolic Succession in the First Two Centuries of the Church; C. H. Turner, "Apostolic Succession," in Essays on the Early History of the Church, ed. H.B. Swete; C. Gore, The Ministry of the Christian Church; H. Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church.

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