The Church and Authority: Part 3 Apostolic Succession in the Church

Whenever I talk about Apostolic Authority the typical response is something along the lines of “I believe in God’s authority not an authority coming from a man.” The nature of the Church’s authority is indeed God but a better way to ask this question may be to ask how the authority was given. Repeatedly through Scripture we see Jesus endowing authority upon the apostles such as Luke 10:16 when Jesus says to the apostles, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” Note, He did not say he who reads you but hears you. This denotes not only the authority of Christ but the oral authority of Christ. A possible Protestant response to this is that this authority ended with the last apostle.

The Protestant argument:
Premise 1: The church does not need apostolic successors.
Premise 2: Nowhere in the New Testament are any of the apostles recorded as passing on their apostolic authority to successors.
Conclusion: Therefore, Apostolic succession is fabricated by the Catholic Church and is contrary to the Bible.

Premise 1 was covered partially in the previous article. I previously showed that the Church was given authority to guide us to truth and away from untruth. I also used the example of the doctrine of the Trinity and the historical debates. Without these apostolic successors it would be impossible to know with absolute authority what the Trinity is and isn’t. There would be nobody to effectively wipe out the Arian controversy of the fourth century. Both the orthodox faith and the Arians used the Bible but the authority came from the Church, through an Ecumenical Council, to decide. If Premise 1 is true, then we must accept the Jehovah Witness’ view on the Trinity as a possibility since there is no way to be sure that one is submitting to divine revelation or to a human interpretation of divine revelation. This does not allow for the oneness that Jesus calls for (concluding Premise 1 in previous article).

In Premise 2, the Protestant position claims that there is no record of the Apostles passing on their authority. There are a couple major problems with this reasoning. First off, in order to call Apostolic Succession contrary to the Bible, the Bible must say that either the Bible is the sole rule of faith as the Protestants claim or that there is no Apostolic Succession. Neither of these appear in the text of the Bible. Instead we find the Bible appealing to the Church to uphold the truth in 1 Timothy 3:15 and even the Bible saying “His office let another take” in Acts 1. The second is that if Apostolic Succession had its own authority, which it does, then it would not necessarily be required to be in Scripture. The nature of the authority does not require it to be written since it is an oral authority. I hate to break it to those that hold the Protestant position on this issue because we can see Apostolic Succession, of many generations, in just one passage, 2 Timothy 2:2, “and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” We see in this first passage Paul teaching Timothy, Timothy teaching faithful men and these same faithful men teaching the next generation. That is four generations of succession (Paul, Timothy, faithful men, the faithful men’s learners).

We also see Paul passing on his office in three other passages to Timothy:

1 Timothy 6:20: “O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.”
2 Timothy 1:6: “Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.”
2 Timothy 1:13-14: “Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.”

Since the nature of this authority does not require Scriptural evidence but would require historical evidence, it is only fair that I present some. One comes from the Apostolic Age while the other is less than 100 years after the Apostolic Age:

"Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. . . . Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry"
- Pope Clement I, Letter to the Corinthians 42:4–5, 44:1–3 (A.D. 80).

"Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time"
-Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:3:1 (A.D. 189)

As we see, there is the testament of two early Church Bishops associating the teaching office with what the Church has handed down as truth. There are many other instances of this with Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, Jerome, and Augustine. The historicity of Apostolic Succession combined with St. Paul to Timothy makes the strong Biblical case an irrefutable one. Since Christ gave the Apostles office the authoritative word of The Father in Luke 10:16 there is no good reason to believe that that too was not passed down but every reason to believe it was as shown in 2 Timothy 2:2.

The concluding argument is as follows:
Premise 1: Paul directs Timothy to pass down his Bishopric.
Premise 2: History shows that the Bishopric was continuously passed down.
Premise 3: The Catholic Church can trace this Tradition from the current Bishops all the way back to the 12 apostles.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Bishopric has been passed down for nearly 2000 years in the Catholic Church.

If you have a suggestion for an apologetic article please leave a comment and I will do my best to get to it or a similar topic. I will also credit you with the question.