Are there apostles today?

Question 09012.

Asking whether there are apostles today gets a sharper answer than most questions about gifts, and the reason is that the New Testament uses the word in two distinct senses which get collapsed into one in the modern debate.

I am a continuationist. I do not believe God switched the gifts off at the end of the first century, and I have written at length elsewhere about why. But the question of apostles today is not settled by continuationism, because it turns on what the office actually was.

Two Uses of One Word

The Greek apostolos means one who is sent, an envoy or emissary. That is its ordinary meaning, and the New Testament uses it in that ordinary sense of people who are not the Twelve.

Epaphroditus is called your messenger in Philippians 2:25, and the word is apostolos. In 2 Corinthians 8:23 Paul speaks of brothers who are messengers of the churches, again apostolos. There is a general use meaning a sent one, a church-planting missionary, an envoy carrying a commission.

Then there is the narrower use, the apostles of Jesus Christ, a defined group with defined qualifications and a defined function. Almost every argument about apostles today is really an argument about which of these two meanings is in view.

The Qualifications of the Office

Luke records the criteria explicitly when Judas is replaced. The candidate had to be one of the men who accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up, and had to become with us a witness to his resurrection (Acts 1:21-22).

Two requirements, then. Personal companionship with Jesus during His earthly ministry, and eyewitness testimony to the resurrection. Paul defends his own standing by appealing to exactly these grounds. Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?

That is decisive for the question of apostles today, because nobody now alive can meet either criterion. Paul describes himself as last of all, as to one untimely born (1 Corinthians 15:8), which reads naturally as the closing of a list rather than the opening of one.

The Foundation Metaphor

Paul gives another argument in Ephesians. The household of God is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20).

Foundations are laid once. A builder who returns every generation to lay more foundation has a problem with the building, not a healthy programme of renewal. The metaphor itself suggests a completed function.

This is one of my main difficulties with the modern claim to apostles today. If the apostolic office is foundational, then reinstating it implies the foundation was insufficient, which in practice tends to mean new revelation is expected.

Signs of an Apostle

Paul appeals to a further mark. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works (2 Corinthians 12:12). Hebrews 2:4 describes God bearing witness to the message by signs and wonders and various miracles.

Note that Paul treats these as distinguishing, which means they were not ordinary. If everyone in the Corinthian church had been doing what Paul did, the appeal would have proved nothing.

I hold that God still heals and still works powerfully, so I am not using this as a cessationist argument. My point is narrower. Those who claim to be apostles today generally cannot produce what Paul produced, and the honest ones admit it. My answers on whether the gifts are for today and whether apostles and prophets are still given set out my continuationism in full.

The Ephesians 4 Objection

The strongest argument on the other side comes from Ephesians 4:11, where the ascended Jesus gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, until we all attain to the unity of the faith.

The argument runs like this. Nobody thinks evangelists and teachers have ceased. The word until implies the whole list continues to a future point. Therefore there are apostles today.

It deserves a proper answer rather than a dismissal. My reply is that Paul is describing gifts given at the ascension which built and continue to build the church, and that the apostolic contribution continues through the New Testament they wrote rather than through successors. The foundation is still holding the building up. It does not follow that it is still being poured.

What the New Apostolic Reformation Claims

The modern movement usually described as the New Apostolic Reformation goes considerably further than the general sense of a sent one. It claims restored governmental offices, with apostles exercising authority over networks of churches and regions, and prophets supplying direction.

This is where my concerns become serious rather than terminological. The claim of apostles today in that governmental sense produces structures the New Testament does not authorise, concentrates authority in men who are accountable to nobody local, and habitually generates fresh revelation alongside Scripture.

It also tends to produce the strategic-level spiritual warfare I regard as unbiblical, with believers commanding territorial powers. My answers on binding Satan and spiritual warfare explain why.

The Accountability Problem

Set the modern arrangement beside the New Testament and the contrast is instructive. The Twelve were accountable enough that Paul opposed Peter to his face when he stood condemned. The Jerusalem council reached a decision together. Paul submitted his gospel to the pillars, not because he doubted it, but because he was not above the process.

Local churches in the New Testament appoint their own elders and hold their own meetings. I hold to the autonomy of the local congregation for exactly this reason, and my answer on local church autonomy works it through.

Where a claim to apostles today translates into authority over congregations that did not appoint the man and cannot remove him, something has gone wrong that has very little to do with spiritual gifts and a great deal to do with power.

What I Would Happily Affirm

I want to be even-handed, because there is something real in the impulse behind the claim. The church does need pioneers. Men and women who go where there is no church, plant, endure, hand over and move on are doing something the New Testament recognises and calls apostolic in the general sense.

I have no objection to describing that work as apostolic, provided it is clear that we mean sent ones rather than office holders alongside Peter and Paul. Words are cheap and confusion is expensive, so I would usually just call them missionaries or church planters.

So my answer on apostles today is layered. In the sense of the Twelve and Paul, no, and the qualifications rule it out. In the sense of sent ones planting churches, yes, and we could do with more of them.

Testing Someone Who Uses the Title

If a man calls himself an apostle, ask three ordinary questions and watch what happens. Who can remove him? What happens to someone who disagrees with him? Where does his money come from and who sees the accounts?

Then ask a doctrinal question. Does he teach that his word carries an authority which Scripture does not correct? Any claim to apostles today that produces revelation beyond the Bible has crossed a line that Galatians 1:8 draws with unusual severity.

And watch the fruit over years. Paul’s list of apostolic credentials in 2 Corinthians is mostly a catalogue of beatings, shipwrecks, hunger and anxiety for the churches. It is not the profile the title usually attracts today.

Why This Matters Practically

Some people find this a remote argument. It is not, because the answer determines who has authority over your church and over your conscience.

If the apostolic office continues, then living men can bind you in ways Scripture does not, and to resist them is to resist God. If it does not, then your church answers to Jesus through His written Word, under elders it has itself recognised, and every teacher is testable by Berean-style examination.

That is a very large practical difference, and it is why the question of apostles today is worth thinking through properly rather than treating as a label dispute.

Were There Apostles Today’s Movements Could Point To in History?

It is worth asking why, if the office continued, the church almost universally stopped using the title for nineteen centuries.

The early church certainly had missionaries, church planters and men of extraordinary reach, and it did not call them apostles in the technical sense. The Didache, written very early, uses the word loosely of travelling preachers and then sets out rules for spotting the fraudulent ones, which tells you the general sense survived and the office did not.

Historical argument never settles doctrine on its own, and I would not rest a case on it. But when a claim about apostles today requires the church to have lost something for nineteen hundred years and recovered it in a single generation, the burden of proof is heavy.

The Question of New Revelation

Here is where the practical danger becomes acute. Apostolic authority in the New Testament included the authority to write Scripture. Peter refers to Paul’s letters alongside the other Scriptures.

If that office continues, then somebody today has an authority equivalent to Paul’s, and there is no principled reason why their words should not carry the same weight. In practice the movements that claim apostles today rarely say this outright, but their functional behaviour often assumes it, with directives treated as beyond question.

Jude’s appeal is to the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Once for all is a strong phrase, and it is difficult to reconcile with a continuing office empowered to deliver more.

Being Fair to the Other Side

I have been critical, so let me put the best case for the opposite view as its advocates would.

They would say that the New Testament plainly calls people apostles who were not among the Twelve, including Barnabas, Andronicus and Junia, and possibly James the Lord’s brother. They would say Ephesians 4 lists the gift alongside gifts nobody thinks have ceased. And they would say that the church’s frontier work has suffered precisely because we abolished a function God gave.

Those are not silly arguments. My reply is that the wider use of the word supports sent ones rather than office holders, and that the qualifications of Acts 1 remain the New Testament’s own definition of the narrower group. But anyone weighing whether there are apostles today should hear that case properly rather than a caricature of it.

What We Lose if the Office Continues

It is worth being explicit about the stakes, because this is not a dispute about vocabulary.

If there are apostles today with the authority the Twelve had, then the canon is not closed in principle, the local church is not finally responsible for its own leadership, and a believer who disagrees with an apostle is in a position no ordinary Christian should ever be placed in.

Every one of those consequences works against the priesthood of all believers, and every one of them has produced casualties where it has been applied. That is why I hold the position firmly rather than as a preference.

Sent Ones We Should Be Praying For

Let me end the argument on the positive side, because a purely negative answer would misrepresent what I believe.

There are thousands of people at this moment planting churches where none exist, translating Scripture into languages that have never had it, and staying in places where staying is dangerous. In the general New Testament sense they are sent ones, and their work is the nearest thing we have to the apostolic pattern.

They rarely have titles, they almost never have networks reporting to them, and they are usually short of money. If the debate about apostles today produced more prayer for those people and fewer conferences, it would have been worth having.

How to Talk About This Without Falling Out

This subject generates more heat than most, and it is worth thinking about how to disagree well.

I would want a charismatic friend who uses the language of apostles today to hear that I am not a cessationist, that I believe God still gives gifts, and that I share their frustration with a timid church. The disagreement is narrow and it is worth stating narrowly.

And I would want to be told plainly where they think I am wrong. Fellowship rests on the gospel, Trinitarian orthodoxy and a high view of Scripture, and none of those are at stake in an argument about whether there are apostles today in the technical sense. Plenty of believers I respect land differently, and I would rather keep talking to them than win the point.

Summing Up the Two Senses

It may help to put the whole answer in a single paragraph, since the distinction is what everything turns on.

In the narrow sense of the Twelve and Paul, apostles today do not exist, because the qualifications of Acts 1 cannot be met by anybody now living, and because the foundation Paul describes has been laid. In the broad sense of sent ones, envoys and church planters, apostolic work continues and always has.

Confusing the two is what produces the trouble. A man who calls himself a sent one and behaves like a missionary is doing something the New Testament recognises. A man who claims the narrower office and behaves like a governor over churches is claiming something it does not offer, and no amount of enthusiasm for the gifts requires us to grant it.

So, now what?

If someone is claiming apostolic office over you, you are not being unspiritual by asking questions. The Bereans were commended for examining the Scriptures daily to check what an actual apostle told them.

And if you are longing for the church to have more courage and more reach, that instinct is a good one. Pray for pioneers, support the ones going where no church exists, and go yourself if God is pressing it on you. That work does not need a title to be genuinely apostolic in the sense that matters.

So where has God actually sent you, and what would it look like to go?

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

Ephesians 2:19-20 (ESV)

For Further Study

Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology gives a concise treatment of the apostolic office and its qualifications, and Lewis Sperry Chafer handles the foundational nature of the apostolate in Systematic Theology. Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology surveys the continuationist and cessationist arguments with more fairness than most, which is useful whichever side you land on. J. Dwight Pentecost and John Walvoord are worth reading on the place of the church age in God’s programme, since much of this argument turns on that framework. Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s work is helpful where the Jewish background of the Twelve and their relationship to Israel is in view.