Succession of Bishops Part 1

After nearly thirty years of experience in evangelical congregation churches, I came to a conclusion that as evangelicals, we are certain we know what legitimate authority is not, but are far less sure we know what legitimate authority is. As I wearily asked a few members of the church I called home for fifteen years, "who, in a congregation church, is the congregation accountable to?" None of us had a good answer. But I was gradually coming to a conclusion.

For three to four years I had dabbled in the study of early church documents. I owned Bettenson's "Documents of the Early Church" and Pelikan's "Emergence of the Catholic Tradition". I bought Jurgen's "Faith of the Early Fathers - Vol 1" and poured over quotations on the internet. I read apologetics from Catholic converts like Scott Hahn and Thomas Howard as well as Orthodox viewpoints from Frank Schaeffer and Kalistos Ware. What I discovered challenged long held assumptions and forced me to alter my views.

It is an unexamined assumption of most in the American Evangelical movement that an Episcopal form of church government - that is - a structure of churches governed by Bishops, was a corruption of the early church pattern that originated after Constantine legalized Christianity and the church became entangled in the politics of the Roman empire. It is generally assumed that the early church was made up of local churches governed by councils of elders and that, on occasion, regional councils of elders would gather to debate and decide larger issues. Any notion that there was significant authority in the Episcopal office was an "unbiblical" corruption that may have existed here and there, but never became the norm until the Roman church was corrupted by power in the fourth or fifth century.

Unfortunately the evidence militates against such a view. I "discovered" what should have never been lost, that by the end of the first century a significant view of the authority of Bishops was already present and by the second century a strong argument for a succession of Episcopal authority was in full force. What is more, such a view was held and argued by many and was essentially unquestioned throughout the history of the church until the Reformation. (This does not necessarily mean that no embellishments have crept into the Roman or Eastern church over two-thousand years, but that is for another discussion).

The oft quoted statement of Clement, who died in 99 A.D. makes it clear that some sense of authority being passed through a succession of Bishops was assumed in the church by the generation which lived immediately after, if not contemporary with, the apostles.

"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" (Letter to the Corinthians)

It is Irenaeus, in the second century, who is most often associated with the notion that true authority in the church is passed along in some sort of succession from bishop to bishop.

"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).

Tertullian, Gregory, Cyprian, Gerome, Eusebius and Augustine could all be quoted, and often are, as clearly articulating a pattern of apostolic succession. Cyprian, in particular makes a statement that ought to raise the eyebrows of anyone in a purely independent congregational church. Arguing against the heretic Novatian, he appeals to the unity of the church, as evidenced by both consistent teaching and structural continuity through the office of Bishop. One cannot assume leadership in the church, according to Cyprian, unless one is a successor to a previous leader:

"...Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself. For he who has not been ordained in the Church can neither have nor hold to the Church in any way" (Letters 69[75]:3 [A.D. 253]).

It would seem to me that anyone claiming authority simply on the basis of a subjective "call to ministry" who is not in some way willing to submit to the authority of the larger church would be summarily dismissed by most of the early fathers. But this does not mean that apostolic succession was an authoritarian arrangement. Gregory, echoing the Didache makes mention of the appointment of the bishop "by the vote of the whole people, not in the evil fashion which has since prevailed, nor by means of bloodshed and oppression.." suggestion that Irenaeus' concern about "strife over the office of the episcopate" was well founded, and it was apparent that certain methods of selection of bishops included an idea of consent. The whole church was involved, not just those who held office. This is echoed by Jerome, Cyprian, and Clement



I found evidence that seemed to challenge some of the practices of the Roman church today, if not the teaching. Tertullian made much of the idea that apostolic authority was based not merely in a mechanical passing along of an external office, but in a continuity with apostolic teaching, asking "Do we prove the faith by the persons, or the persons by the faith?..." He mentions specific churches to be considered true churches because "although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine." (The Prescription Against Heretics) Other similar sentiments can be traced to Paul, the Didache, Irenaeus and Jerome.

So it seems we come to another question. Did the early church hold to succession as a means of preserving apostolicity or as evidence of it? In studying this issue, it occurred to me that Irenaeus and Cyprian were not advocating an purely mechanical succession for the sake of itself. To a large degree, what they argued was that apostolic succession was an evidence of unity and purity, an indication that the doctrine taught by the apostles had not been corrupted.

In contrasting the rightful authority of the bishops with the false teachings of schismatics, Irenaeus seems to be saying, "if you want to know the true doctrine, do not look for it on the fringes! Go to any part of the world and interview many bishops and you will find they all teach the same doctrine." The role of a bishop is to "guard the deposit of the faith", as Paul told Timothy. Christianity is not an esoteric secret knowledge found in obscure sects (or necessarily in independent congregations). Rather, it is a publicly attested confession of historical and spiritual truth, a truth that can be verified by the consistency of its teachers across time and geographical space. In other words, the main point is not that continuity of succession guarantees sound doctrine, but that continuity of both doctrine and succession are evidence of truth.

In the end, I remained uncomfortable with some aspects of Catholic and Orthodox views of apostolic succession. There have been too many false bishops in all traditions across the centuries.

But what cannot be honestly held is the view that apostolic succession is a construct of the corrupted church long after the death of the apostles. Within one or two generations after the apostles finished the penning of the New Testament documents, an unmistakably clear and fairly uniform understanding of church authority was entrenched. Churches were governed by presbyters and groups of churches were organized in cities and regions under the authority of bishops. Men who knew the apostles well and knew the New Testament documents well saw nothing unusual, contradictory or false to the Gospels or Epistles in an Episcopal form of church government. It was assumed that each bishop derived his authority from his connection to the one who came before him, ultimately originating with the apostles. Authority has a root. It is grounded in the apostles teaching, and for most of the history of the church, this was the almost unquestioned norm.