What is the Church? This is one of the biggest issues dividing the Protestant and Catholic traditions. According to the Protestant tradition, the Church exists wherever a disciplined community of Jesus’s disciples gathers around the preaching of God’s word and the administration of the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper). According to the Catholic tradition, this is not sufficient. The Catholic Church teaches that the true Church exists only where there is a bishop whose office can be traced in an unbroken line all the way back to the apostles. This is what is known as “apostolic succession.” According to the Catholic Church, since most Protestants churches lack bishops who are in apostolic succession, they are not genuine Churches, even if baptized Protestants may be genuine Christians (“separated brethren”).
So, while Protestants understand the Church to be a people formed by the Word of God, Catholics understand the Church to be an Authoritative institution perpetuated by apostolic succession. Catholic apologists argue that their understanding of the Church and its Authority is supported by Scripture and the teachings of the early Church Fathers. They see the Protestant understanding of the Church to be an arbitrary deviation from a genuine Christian understanding of the Church. But is this the case?
Leadership and Authority in Scripture
Before delving into the issue of what the early Christians had to say about apostolic succession, we should take a step back and examine what Scripture as a whole has to say about positions of leadership and authority among God’s covenant people.
In the beginning, God directly appointed Moses as leader over Israel, then directly appointed Joshua as his successor. This did not establish any kind of line of succession. During the period of the judges, God would directly raise up judges by His Spirit as leaders in various times and places. He established no dynasties, and no institutions of leadership. Then, Israel asked God for a king. God was unhappy with this because He wanted to directly rule over them; He said that by their request they were rejecting Him as king (1 Sam 8:7-8). However, He reluctantly agreed to their request, first directly appointing Saul as king (a decision He later retracted) and then David. God made a covenant with David, and, because of this covenant, did preserve David’s dynasty. However, this does not mean that these kings always acted with divine Authority. David himself gave some commands which should not have been followed (2 Sam 11:14-17), and most of his descendants were wicked and led Israel into sin; often the right thing to do was to disobey the king’s authority. Now, of course, Jesus is the ultimate Davidic king, the Messiah. He has not established successors, since He is still alive! He is right now reigning forever, exercising His Authority over the Church through the Holy Spirit.
In the Old Testament, prophets were directly called by God to Authoritatively speak His word. Though there was apparently some kind of official guild or school of prophets, genuine prophetic Authority was independent of this (Amos 7:12-15). God was free to call anyone he wanted and to have them speak with prophetic Authority. It should be noted, though, that the prophet’s Authority resided in the word of God which they spoke, not in their person or office per se. For example, in I Kings 13:11-25, a prophet is killed for disobeying God when he did what another prophet told him to do. In the New Testament period, prophecy continues as a spiritual gift (Rom 12:6, 1 Cor 12:10). God can still empower Christians to speak His Authoritative word, and it should be noted that this spiritual gift is independent of any office or leadership position in the church.
The Old Testament priesthood was a leadership position passed down via succession (though via family line, not appointment). The priests had the responsibility of watching over the sacred space of the tabernacle/temple and teaching the people. However, now that Jesus, our great High Priest has come, that priesthood is done away with (Heb 7:11-28). We no longer need a priesthood to mediate between us and God, but only the one Priestly mediator, Jesus Christ (I Tim 2:5), through whom we can directly, boldly approach God’s throne (Heb 4:16). In fact, in the New Testament, all believers in Jesus, all members of the Church, are priests (Rev 1:6, 5:10), and we all share in Christ’s reign.
So, an examination of all three types of leadership – political, prophetic, and priestly – among God’s people in the story of Scripture shows no support for the idea that God establishes positions of leadership which Authoritatively speak His word and which hand down that Authority via succession. Only God has supreme Authority. Only God is infallible. While God does sometimes have His Authoritative word spoken through human agents–prophets and inspired biblical authors–He does not place His Divine Authority in any human institution such that it always acts and/or teaches with Divine Authority.
Leadership and Authority in the Early Church
Keeping this in mind, let us turn to the New Testament epistles, which speak of new positions of leadership among God’s people: “elders” and “bishops.” Some Catholic apologists point to this as proving that a Church hierarchy of priests and bishops, along with the necessity of apostolic succession, goes all the way back to the apostles. However, there is a strong consensus among New Testament scholars – Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise – that the terms presbyter (elder) and episkopos (overseer/”bishop”) are synonymous terms in the New Testament. We also see these terms used interchangeably in 1 Clement, a late first century orthodox Christian text. The New Testament talks about appointing “elders” and “overseers” in churches, but these seem to be general terms for leaders in church congregations, apparently with multiple elders or “bishops” in a single congregation. (Some Protestant churches, trying to be as biblical as possible, choose not to have a head “pastor” at all, instead simply having multiple elders in leadership). It is thus highly questionable whether the office of “bishop” as we know it, with a bishop over all the churches in a city and a “priest” over each individual congregation, even existed in the first century.
Catholic apologists point to the fact that Paul appointed Titus as an authoritative Church leader who was then told to appoint other Church leaders (Tit 1:5) as supporting the idea that apostolic succession is necessary. They argue that it is unbiblical to appoint people to positions of Church leadership via a congregational vote. But just because the New Testament describes some church leaders being appointed by succession doesn’t mean that all church leaders must be appointed through apostolic succession in order for a true church to exist. The orthodox Christian text The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, from the late first century (potentially earlier than some NT texts), instructs Christians, “Appoint for yourselves bishops/overseers and deacons worthy of the Lord, men who are meek and not lovers of money, true and approved,”[1]Ch. 15:1. which shows that at least some very early Christian communities appointed their own Church leaders. A congregation’s vote in and of itself is not sufficient to appoint someone to an office of authority in the church. However, when a community of Jesus’ disciples, as the Church, prayerfully and carefully seeks the Lord’s will and makes a decision to appoint someone as a leader in the church, we can believe by faith that the Holy Spirit is there acting through the congregation’s decision, calling this person to a position of leadership in God’s Church.
After the passing of the apostles, the Church had to decide how it was going to deal with questions of authority in the Church now that these Authoritative leaders were gone. By the early second century, the Church had developed a hierarchy of leadership, with the office of bishop being a higher position than the office of elder. In the late second century, we see in the writings of St. Irenaeus the first appeal to apostolic succession, as he argues that orthodox churches are right because they have bishops whose office can be traced all the way back to the apostles.[2]Against Heresies.III.3. Catholic apologists point to this as proof that apostolic succession is necessary in order for there to be a true Church.
However, a careful reading of what St. Irenaeus says about apostolic succession shows that he is not making an abstract claim that the Church is defined by the office of bishop in apostolic succession. Rather, he is making an ad hoc polemical argument to refute heretics who claim that they have the real teachings of the apostles. Irenaeus shows the absurdity of the heretics’ claims via an historical argument that the teachings of every orthodox bishop can be traced back to the apostles. Now, it is questionable whether Irenaeus is entirely historically accurate in his claim that he can trace the office of “bishop” in these churches all the way back to the apostles. But even leaving that question aside, it is clear that he is not saying that orthodox churches are right simply because they have bishops in apostolic succession; rather, he is saying that orthodox churches are right because they are faithful to the teachings of the apostles, and he points to apostolic succession as evidence in support of his assertion that we can be confident that these churches have remained faithful to the apostles’ teachings.
The idea that it is absolutely necessary for a church to have bishops who are in apostolic succession and that this is what defines the true Church is taught neither in Scripture nor in the teachings of the early Church fathers. It is a later development. What the early Church Fathers were concerned with was ensuring that the Church remained faithful to the teachings of the Apostles, which are recorded in Scripture. If remaining faithful to the Apostles’ teachings requires defying a bishop who is in apostolic succession, the early Church Fathers would fully support that.
The Problem with Apostolic Succession
Here is the problem with apostolic succession: what good does it actually do? Right now, there are Eastern Orthodox bishops, Roman Catholic bishops, and Anglican bishops, all in apostolic succession, who are in schism with one another and teach significantly different things. Not only that, but to this day there are still Monophysite Coptic bishops and Nestorian Assyrian bishops in apostolic succession, who do not even hold to orthodox Chalcedonian Christology! Clearly, being a bishop in apostolic succession does not give someone the power to Authoritatively interpret Scripture. Institutional continuity by itself is empty and meaningless, and insisting upon its necessity is a distraction from what actually matters: faithfulness to the teachings of God’s Word.
The Apostles had a unique Authority, granted to them directly by Jesus. After the apostles, their Authoritative teachings are passed on through the body of Christ, and especially through the Scriptures, the very word of God, which contain the teachings of the Apostles in pure, unadulterated form. There is no good reason to think that those appointed to positions of leadership in the Church, even if they are bishops in apostolic succession, have Apostolic Authority directly transferred to them. Rather, those who hold positions of leadership in the Church are merely those who have the responsibility of teaching the Church what the Apostles taught and trying to ensure that the Church lives according to those teachings. The true “apostolic succession” is the faithful handing down of the teachings of the apostles, which can happen with or without an office of bishop that can be traced all the way back to the apostles. There may be some value in having such institutional continuity, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient in order to have a true Church.
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