Apostolic
Succession
One of the principal dogmatic
points to be found in 1 Clement, as is widely recognized, is the doctrine of
the apostolic succession. Some have accused 1 Clement, understood as written in
96, of having invented the teaching. It is true that apostolic succession in
the sense of a second generation of church leaders taking the place of the
Apostles is not explicitly to be found in the New Testament. On the other hand,
it is far from true that the doctrine has no New Testament roots or parallels.
Just a few will be noted here.
In Galatians Paul forcefully
defends his gospel, that is, not his gospel, but the one he was
preaching. The distinction is important because it helps show that Paul was
defending himself against those who were charging him with not preaching the
real gospel, but one which came “from men.” In 1:11 he writes:
For I would have you know,
brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I
did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation
of Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless, in 2:2, still by a “revelation,”
Paul relates that he went up to Jerusalem and laid before “those who were of
repute” (later, in 2:9, identified as James, Cephas, and John) the gospel as he
had preached it to the Gentiles, “let somehow I should be running or had run in
vain.” In 1:1ff., Paul gives his famous account of how he had to oppose Cephas
to his face over the question of the permissibility of Christian Jews to share
table fellowship with Gentile converts. Throughout the episode Paul stresses,
by implication, the importance he saw in convincing Cephas of his views. It is
as though Paul recognized that if he lost this battle to Cephas, then it would
be a fatal loss, since Cephas was one of those “in repute,” which is today, the
Apostles Paul had already stressed the importance he laid on apostleship in
Galatians 1:1: “Paul an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus
Christ and God the Father.” In what follows, Paul admits, as it were, that he
had even gone to Jerusalem and compared his gospel with that of the “pillars,”
and had had the hand of fellowship, of approval, extended to him by the
Apostles. He opposes one of these Apostles when he is convinced that Cephas was
not being “straightforward about the truth of the Gospel.” It is important to
realize that this presentation was being made, in context, for the good of the
Galatian Christians who were themselves being tempted to believe “another
gospel” (v. 6-9). Thus Paul reflects two essential things: that the gospel does
not originate with men, not even with the Apostles (!), but also that the true
gospel is authenticated by the witness of the Apostles, hence the fierce opposition
to Cephas’ error. We can begin to see, then, that the apostolic stamp of
approval was already a value for Paul.
In another context Paul also
admits that, at least in its particular details, he, too, had “received” the
gospel. Reference is made to the extremely important, and ancient formulation of
the content of the kerygma in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. In this section, Paul
stresses the importance of the gospel, that it precedes the Apostles but in its
being revealed to them, they become its witnesses:
5. . . . and that he appeared to
Cephas and then to the twelve. . . . 7. Then he appeared to James and then to
all the apostles. 8. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to
me. . . .11. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
Here we have Paul’s doctrine that
the gospel comes from God but through the Apostles himself among them. His own
dependence on the preaching of the Apostles is with regard to the details of
the content, that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried and that he
was raised on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures. But for the
power of the gospel itself, he depends on no one, having received a vision of
the Risen Lord himself, whence derives his apostleship. But what is essential
here is that Paul links the preaching of the gospel to the Apostles: it is
they, and he of course, who preach the gospel. Thus, again, we have Paul
himself forging the all-important link between the gospel’s authenticity and
the person of the Apostles. This tradition, especially later in times of persecution
and heretical division in Christianity, would give the apostolic character of
the gospel new significance and the apostolic origin of Church leadership a new
urgency. Finally, it would become the hallmark par excellence of the orthodox
gospel. 1 Clement is a stage in the lengthy development of a full-blown
doctrine of apostolic succession, but he can by no means be said to have
created it ex nihilo if, as we have seen, the apostolic character of the
gospel itself was already so essential in the mind of Paul. (Thomas J. Herron, Clement
and the Early Church of Rome: On the Dating of Clement’s First Epistle to the
Corinthians [Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Publishing, 2008], 68-70)
