Absence of “Succession”
in the New Testament?
Luke knows succession terminology, but
he never applies it to Christian leaders. He uses διαδοχος, “successor,” in an institutional sense in
naming Festus “successor” of Felix as governor in Caesarea (Acts 24.27). In the
only other use of such terminology, where the participle διαδεξαμενοι is employed in
Stephen’s speech (Acts 7.45), Jewish forefathers receive the tent of testimony,
with no relation to any office or institutional position.
Ehrhardt proposes that Luke saw no reason to use succession terms in his
account of the Church. (Ehrhardt, Apostolic Succession, 33) This
observation is pertinent with respect to the process of institutionalization.
Luke’s record is concerned more with expansion of Christianity and beginnings
of churches than with continuity with the churches. Even where he mentions leaders
in Jerusalem (Acts 6.1-6; 11.1-18; 15.4-22; 21.17-18). Antioch (13.1-4), Iconium,
Lystra, Derbe (14.23), and Ephesus (20.17-38), the leaders are only in the
first generation of the church’s existence. He would no doubt be sensitive to
issues of succession if he were speaking of church developments twenty-five
years later. By such time there would have emerged patterns regarding the
transfer of leadership not from an itinerant apostle or evangelist to a
resident group of leaders (cf. Acts 14.23; 20.28) but from the first resident
leaders to subsequent ones replacing them (cf. 1 Clem. 42).
Similarly the Pastorals refer to appointments of resident leaders by itinerant
individuals (2 Tim 2.2; Titus 1.5) without interest in succession terminology.
Again, the churches involves are in the first generation. Ehrhardt’s viewpoint
on the Pastorals is thought-provoking. He is confident that “in the Pastoral
Epistles the attempt was made to establish a succession after St. Paul through
Timothy,” though he can not determine “what sort of succession was envisaged.”
(Ibid., 34) Ehrhardt fails to distinguish continuity of function from succession,
which is a continuity of office. The Pastorals provide officials to continue
protecting their churches (Titus 1.5, 7, 9-14; cf. 2 Tim 2.2) but not to
continue the office or position held by the apostle or his lieutenant. Titus
and Timothy are not to appoint leaders to succeed Paul as an apostle or them as
his assistants, “delegates,” as they are sometimes called. However, we have
seen reason earlier in this chapter to conclude that the appointments noted in
the Pastorals (1 Tim 3.1-5; 5.22; Titus 1.5-9; ? 2 Tim 2.2) refers to
overseers, monepiskopoi, each of whom is to take responsibility for an
entire city’s house congregations. This responsibility is evidently being
transferred from the apostle’s assistant to one of the “elders” in each city,
that is, an overseer of one of the house congregations in the city. The newly
appointed monepiskopos, then, is from “apostolic” appointment—at least “apostolic”
one step removed—but is not “succeeding to” the office of apostle since such
involves, by definition, itinerancy. He is the overseer of the house churches
in the city by apostolic appointment. He assumes the apostle’s role to that
extent in the city but does not “succeed to apostleship.” The situation is equivalent
to that sequence read in Irenaeus: Peter and Paul “founded” the church in Rome,
then they “committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate,” and
only then was there “succession” within the episcopate, next, to Analectus and “in
the third place from the apostles, Clement” (Haer. 3.3.3). (Robert
Lee Williams, Bishop Lists: Formation of Apostolic Succession of Bishops in
Ecclesiastical Crises [Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and Patristics
16; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2005], 58-59)