Friday, April 1, 2022

Thomas J. Herron on Apostolic Succession in the New Testament

  

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)