Apostolic succession
Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is considered by some Christian denominations to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops. Those of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox; Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East; Scandinavian Lutheran, Anglican, Moravian and Czechoslovak Hussite; and Old Catholic traditions maintain that a bishop's orders are neither regular nor valid without consecration through apostolic succession. These traditions do not always consider the episcopal consecrations of all of the other traditions as valid.
This series was seen originally as that of the bishops of a particular see founded by one or more of the apostles. According to historian Justo L. González, apostolic succession is generally understood today as meaning a series of bishops, regardless of see, each consecrated by other bishops, themselves consecrated similarly in a succession going back to the apostles. According to the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, "apostolic succession" means more than a mere transmission of powers. It is succession in a church which witnesses to the apostolic faith, in communion with the other churches, witnesses of the same apostolic faith. The "see plays an important role in inserting the bishop into the heart of ecclesial apostolicity", but once ordained, the bishop becomes in his church the guarantor of apostolicity and becomes a successor of the apostles.
Those who hold for the importance of apostolic succession via episcopal laying on of hands appeal to the New Testament which, they say, implies a personal apostolic succession, from Paul to Timothy and Titus, for example. They appeal as well to other documents of the early Church, especially the Epistle of Clement. In this context, Clement explicitly states that the apostles appointed bishops as successors and directed that these bishops should in turn appoint their own successors; given this, such leaders of the Christian Church were not to be removed without cause and not in this way. Further, proponents of the necessity of the personal apostolic succession of bishops within the Christian Church point to the universal practice of the Great Church and state church of the Roman Empire, up to AD 431, before it was divided into the Church of the East, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
Some Christians, including many Protestants, deny the need for this type of continuity and severely question the historical claims involved; Anglican academic Eric G. Jay comments that the account given of the emergence of the episcopate in Chapter III of the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium "is very sketchy, and many ambiguities in the early history of the Christian ministry are passed over". Still, others teach and claim the importance of apostolic succession through individuals such as J. Delano Ellis and Paul S. Morton of the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops.
Definitions
, an English Anglican bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury, described three meanings of "apostolic succession":- One bishop succeeding another in the same see meant that there was a continuity of teaching: "while the Church as a whole is the vessel into which the truth is poured, the Bishops are an important organ in carrying out this task".
- The bishops were also successors of the apostles in that "the they performed of preaching, governing and ordaining were the same as the Apostles had performed".
- It is also used to signify that "grace is transmitted from the Apostles by each generation of bishops through the imposition of hands".
In its 1982 statement on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches stated that "the primary manifestation of apostolic succession is to be found in the apostolic tradition of the Church as a whole.... Under the particular historical circumstances of the growing Church in the early centuries, the succession of bishops became one of the ways, together with the transmission of the Gospel and the life of the community, in which the apostolic tradition of the Church was expressed." It spoke of episcopal succession as something that churches that do not have bishops can see "as a sign, though not a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church" and that all churches can see "as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the whole church".
The Porvoo Common statement —agreed to by the Anglican churches of the British Isles and most of the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia and the Baltic—echoed the Munich and Finland statements of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church by stating that "the continuity signified in the consecration of a bishop to episcopal ministry cannot be divorced from the continuity of life and witness of the diocese to which he is called".
Some Anglicans, in addition to other Protestants, held that apostolic succession "may also be understood as a continuity in doctrinal teaching from the time of the apostles to the present". For example, the British Methodist Conference locates the "true continuity" with the early Church of past ages in "the continuity of Christian experience, the fellowship in the gift of the one Spirit; in the continuity in the allegiance to one Lord, the continued proclamation of the message; the continued acceptance of the mission".
The teaching of the Second Vatican Council on apostolic succession has been summed up as follows:
Development
In the early Fathers
According to International Theological Commission, conflicts could not always be avoided between individuals among the New Testament communities; Paul appealed to his apostolic authority when there was a disagreement about the Gospel or principles of Christian life. How the development of apostolic government proceeded is difficult to denote accurately because of the paucity of relevant documents. The ITC says that the apostles, or their closest assistants or their successors, directed the local colleges of episkopoi and presbyteroi by the end of the first century; while by the beginning of the second century the figure of a single bishop, as the head of the communities, appears explicitly in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch. In the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius wrote about three degrees ministry:Ramsey says that the doctrine was formulated in the second century in the first of the [|three senses given by him], originally as a response to Gnostic claims of having received secret teaching from Christ or the apostles; it emphasised the public manner in which the apostles had passed on authentic teaching to those whom they entrusted with the care of the churches they founded and that these in turn had passed it on to their successors. Ramsey argues that only later was it given a different meaning, a process in which Augustine played a part by emphasising the idea of "the link from consecrator to consecrated whereby the grace of order was handed on".
Writing in about AD 94, Clement of Rome states that the apostles appointed successors to continue their work where they had planted churches and for these in their turn to do the same because they foresaw the risk of discord: "Our Apostles, too, by the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ, knew that strife would arise concerning the dignity of a bishop; and on this account, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed the above-mentioned as bishops and deacons: and then gave a rule of succession, in order that, when they had fallen asleep, other men, who had been approved, might succeed to their ministry". According to Anglican Eric G. Jay, the interpretation of his writing is disputed, but it is clear that he supports some sort of approved continuation of the ministry exercised by the apostles which in its turn was derived from Christ.
According to John Zizioulas, the Didache portrays bishops and deacons as successors to the earlier charismatic leaders, prophets and teachers, who originally led the community in teaching and in celebrating the Eucharist. By linking their ordination directly to the Eucharistic context, the text indicates that bishops and deacons inherited the same ministry once exercised by the prophets, rather than replacing it. This reflects an early stage in the Christian Church's development where charismatic leadership evolved into an ordained structure, maintaining continuity in function and preserving the unity of the local church through the Eucharist.
Hegesippus and Irenaeus introduce explicitly the idea of the bishop's succession in office as a guarantee of the truth of what he preached in that it could be traced back to the apostles, and they produced succession lists to back this up. That this succession depended on the fact of ordination to a vacant see and the status of those who administered the ordination is seldom commented on. Woollcombe also states that no one questioned the apostolicity of the see of Alexandria despite the fact that its popes were consecrated by the college of presbyters up till the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325. On the contrary, other sources clearly state that Mark the Evangelist is the first bishop of Alexandria ; then he ordained Annianus as his successor bishop as told by Eusebius.
James F. Puglisi, director of Centro Pro Unione, made a conclusion about Irenaeus' writings: "the terms episkopos and presbyteros are interchangeable, but the term episkopos is applied to the person who is established in every Church by the apostles and their successors". According to Eric G. Jay, Irenaeus also refers to a succession of presbyters who preserve the tradition "which originates from the apostles" and later goes on to speak of their having "an infallible gift of truth" . Jay comments that this is sometimes seen as an early reference to the idea of the transmission of grace through the apostolic succession which in later centuries was understood as being specifically transmitted through the laying on of hands by a bishop within the apostolic succession. He warns that this is open to the grave objection that it makes grace a material commodity and represents an almost mechanical method of imparting what is by definition a free gift. He adds that the idea cannot be squeezed out of Irenaeus' words.
Writing a little later, Tertullian makes the same main point but adds expressly that recently founded churches could be considered apostolic if they had "derived the tradition of faith and the seeds of doctrine" from an apostolic church, whether they had devised a succession list or not. Tertullian stated:
His disciple and recent convert, Cyprian appeals to the same fundamental principle of election to a vacant see in the aftermath of the Decian Persecution when denying the legitimacy of his rigorist rival in Carthage and that of the anti-pope Novatian in Rome.
The emphasis is now on legitimating Cyprian's episcopal ministry as a whole and specifically his exclusive right to administer discipline to the lapsed rather than on the content of what is taught. Cyprian also laid great emphasis on the fact that any minister who broke with the entire Church lost ipso facto the gift of the Spirit which had validated his orders. This meant that the minister would have no power or authority to celebrate an efficacious sacrament; in contrast, Augustine of Hippo and others taught that schism did not invalidate someone's holy orders.