What is apostolic succession?

Question 09018.

The doctrine of apostolic succession holds that the authority Jesus gave His apostles has been handed down in an unbroken chain of ordinations, bishop to bishop, from the first century to the present day. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and some Anglican bodies rest a good deal of weight on it. On this account, a church has valid ministry and valid sacraments because its bishops stand in that line, and a church outside the line does not.

It is a serious claim and it deserves a serious answer rather than a shrug. I do not hold to apostolic succession, and I want to explain why from Scripture and from the historical record rather than from Baptist reflex.

What the Claim Actually Involves

The argument runs in three steps. Jesus commissioned the apostles and gave them authority to teach, to govern and to administer the sacraments. The apostles appointed successors, particularly bishops, and laid hands on them. Those bishops appointed others in turn, and so the chain continues. Matthew 16:18 and 19, where Jesus speaks to Peter about the keys, is normally treated as the foundation, with the Roman bishop occupying a unique place in the succession.

Everything then hangs on the chain being unbroken. If a link fails, the authority does not arrive. This is why questions about the validity of particular ordinations have mattered so much historically, and why Rome declared Anglican orders null and void in 1896. Apostolic succession is not a decorative idea about heritage; it is a claim about where valid ministry can be found.

Where the Idea Came From

The impulse behind it was originally a good one. In the second century Gnostic teachers were claiming secret traditions received from the apostles, and orthodox writers such as Irenaeus answered by pointing to the public succession of teachers in the great churches. His argument was essentially evidential: our teaching can be traced openly to the apostles, yours cannot. He was appealing to succession as proof of doctrinal continuity, not as a channel of sacramental power.

What happened over the following centuries is that the argument shifted. Succession moved from being evidence for apostolic teaching to being a conveyance of apostolic authority in its own right, transmitted by the laying on of hands regardless of what the man in question actually taught. That shift is the point at which I part company, because it inverts the original logic. Irenaeus used succession to defend the truth. Later use of apostolic succession defends the office even where the truth has gone.

What the New Testament Shows About Apostolic Ministry

The New Testament records no instruction to establish a chain of this kind. When the apostles appoint leaders in Acts and the Pastoral Epistles, what they hand on is a message rather than a mystical status. Paul’s charge to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2 is the closest thing to a succession text in the whole canon: what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Four generations are in view there, and the thing being transmitted is content.

Notice too what Paul says to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. He does not tell them that their standing will protect the church. He warns them that fierce wolves will come in among them, and that from among their own number men will arise speaking twisted things. Then he commends them to God and to the word of His grace. If office guaranteed fidelity, that warning would make no sense.

The Qualifications That Cannot Be Passed On

The strongest objection to apostolic succession is the way the New Testament defines an apostle in the first place. When the eleven replaced Judas in Acts 1:21 to 22, they required a man who had accompanied them throughout the Lord’s ministry and who could serve as a witness to the resurrection. Paul defends his own standing in 1 Corinthians 9:1 by asking, have I not seen Jesus our Lord, and calls himself in 1 Corinthians 15:8 one untimely born, the last in the sequence.

That qualification is not transferable. Nobody in the third century, let alone the twenty first, has accompanied Jesus through His earthly ministry or seen the risen Lord in that way. The Greek word apostolos means one who is sent, and there is a broader New Testament usage covering messengers of the churches. But the apostolic office in its foundational sense belongs to a generation that has passed. I have written more on this in my article asking whether there are apostles today.

Foundations Are Laid Once

Ephesians 2:20 says the household of God is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. A foundation is laid once. You do not keep relaying it while the walls go up, and a builder who tried would be doing damage rather than construction. The apostolic era was foundational in exactly this sense, and what the apostles left behind is not a queue of successors but a completed body of teaching that we now possess in the New Testament.

There is also the plain historical difficulty. The early lists of Roman bishops are not consistent with one another, the monarchical episcopate seems to have developed gradually rather than existing from the start, and the record of the ninth and tenth centuries includes appointments so irregular that any chain running through them is hard to defend. Anyone who insists that apostolic succession is unbroken is claiming rather more than the surviving evidence can bear.

Why Apostolic Succession Matters Practically

This is not an argument about ancient plumbing. It determines where you look for authority when something goes wrong. If apostolic succession is the guarantee, then the church that possesses it can correct the Bible, because the same authority that authenticated the canon interprets it. If the apostolic deposit is the New Testament itself, then Scripture stands over every church and every officeholder, and a bishop in the line who denies the resurrection has forfeited the thing that mattered.

I would rather have a congregation of ordinary believers holding the apostolic gospel than a cathedral holding a certificate. Real continuity with the apostles is doctrinal, and it is available to any church willing to submit to what the apostles wrote. That is also why I treat ordination as the church’s recognition of a calling rather than the transfer of a power, and why the marks of a true church are about word, ordinances and discipline rather than lineage. The notes at NET Bible on Ephesians 2 are helpful on the foundation image.

There is a further practical consequence worth naming. A doctrine of apostolic succession makes it very difficult for a church to reform itself, because the mechanism that would correct an error is the same office that authorised it. Reform then has to come from outside, which is precisely what happened in the sixteenth century and precisely why it was so painful. Where Scripture stands over the church, correction can come from an ordinary believer with an open Bible, and the church that welcomes that correction is stronger for it.

What I Would Say to a Catholic or Orthodox Friend

I would not be dismissive. There is something worth honouring in a tradition that has kept the creeds, defended the deity of Jesus and refused to be blown about by every passing fashion. Continuity matters, and a church with no sense of history is easy prey for whatever arrives next.

But I would ask a direct question. If a man in the succession began teaching that Jesus did not rise bodily, would his ordination still make him a legitimate minister of the church? Every Christian I have ever asked says no, and that answer concedes the point. It admits that fidelity to apostolic teaching is what actually counts, and that apostolic succession without apostolic doctrine is an empty pipe.

I would also want to say that the question is not settled by counting centuries. A practice can be venerable and still be a development, and the earliest Christians did not think of themselves as guarding a chain so much as guarding a message. That is where the conversation belongs.

So, now what?

If you are in a church that claims the succession, test it by the thing it exists to protect. Is the gospel of grace preached there? Is Scripture opened and obeyed? Those questions will tell you far more about your church than any diagram of episcopal lineage.

If you are in a congregation with no such claim, do not feel second class about it. Your line to the apostles runs through the pages of your Bible, and it has never been broken. The charge Paul gave Timothy is the charge that still holds: guard the deposit, entrust it to faithful people, keep teaching it. Who are you passing it on to at the moment?

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)