merefaith: discipleship in the ruins of empire

I am a happy Baptist now and very accepting of the love-hate relationship with my tradition that surely every faithful Christian has with his or hers. But when I began divinity school I was not a happy Baptist, for I arrived a wounded veteran of a recent round of the Southern Baptist holy war as it played out in the affairs of my college. I was sickened by the tactics of the ultraconservatives and I could not go back to their highly sectarian, insular form of the faith. But I was not comfortable either with my allies among the moderates, who all too often prized individual freedom above faithfulness to historic Christianity.

Increasingly attracted by traditional liturgy, ancient practices, and creedal stability, it seemed I was on the fast track to some other ecclesial home. And for a while I was, and contemplated Eastern Orthodoxy for a time. However, I stepped back from the leap, deciding that I still had so much to learn in my theological education. Now I am not only content but eager as a Baptist, and sometimes I almost revel in confounding my Anglican and Methodist friends at Duke when I do things that are supposedly "un-Baptist."

Not all my friends have reaffirmed their Christian commitment within the Baptist fold in the wake of my college's civil war. Some who were on the edges of the faith have left it behind entirely. Others who have been dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ for some time have chosen to switch to traditions that appear more amenable to a stable, balanced orthodoxy - either Anglicanism or, in the case of one friend, Eastern Orthodoxy. Now a catechumen, he has for some time been puzzled why I not only stopped in my tracks when it seemed I was running in the same direction, but also turned back around. We have decided to dialogue on some key issues, the first of which being apostolic succession. Originally this enterprise was conducted on the student advocacy web site for my college, but now it has apparently been attacked and deleted. So we will renew our conversation on our blogs. Therefore I present to you my opening statement to Paul as to why I do not accept the traditional doctrine of apostolic succession.

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Perhaps we need to begin with a definition of apostolic succession. For what I will be critiquing is neither a) the notion that the apostles may have appointed leaders to serve in the church – this is quite simply a sensible move to keep a community going; nor b) the notion that a visible succession or continuity in church leadership is a helpful sign, or indeed perhaps an aid, in the unity of the Church and the preservation of its teaching. Rather, what I do reject is the more robust doctrine summed up by Kallistos Ware as follows:

All bishops share equally in the apostolic succession, all have the same sacramental powers, all are divinely appointed teachers of the faith.

• Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church. London: Penguin Books, revised 1997.

Or, as he explicates further on in his book, that the bishop receives a special charisma from the Holy Spirit that enables him to act as teacher/imparter of the faith, that validates him for celebration of the Eucharist, and that makes him “the fountain of all the sacraments” (Ware, 249). Adding to Ware's description, I note that the doctrine of apostolic succession through the bishops as successors of the apostles is seen as a necessary sign without which one has no guarantee of being Church. Or, as Ware says, “Without the bishops there can be no Orthodox people...” (Ware, 250). My working definition of classical AS (I will simply refer to the doctrine by these initials from now one) is thus as follows: that the apostles ordained bishops through the laying on of hands to impart a special gift of the Holy Spirit and thus made them valid successors. The Church only properly exists where people gather around these duly-ordained successors to receive instruction, the sacraments, and ordination to the other two orders of ministry – the priesthood and the diaconate. Schismation from this orderly succession of bishops means to be cast out of the visible unity of the Church, the ark of salvation.

Like you at present, I used to find this vision compelling. In some respects, it's neat and clean and allows a ready answer to the difficult question of where one may find the Church. It has a certain sensible appeal – why wouldn't such a succession be set up to guarantee the visible unity and legitimacy of church fellowships? And the very audacity of Orthodox claims can be quite hypnotic: surely such a strident conviction would have deep roots and overwhelming historical evidence in order to be made. And indeed AS does have quite a historical resume, but now I believe that this is made possible only by a superficial reading of history. I reject the claim of AS now because of New Testament and historical counter-evidence, gaps and discrepancies in the historical record, and the movement in ecumenical theology away from AS, classically defined, as belonging to the esse of Church.

1. The New Testament

First of all, biblical scholarship has known for decades that there is no one ecclesiology that characterizes all the writings that make up the New Testament; rather, there are several ecclesiologies that stand in tension with one another due to their competing emphases and conceptions of the community that gathers around the teaching of Jesus. Is the Church primarily a community of mutual discipline tempered by a hermeneutic of mercy? Then your ecclesiology is heavily dependent on Matthew. Is it a charismatic fellowship that follows trails blazed by the freedom of the Spirit? Then your ecclesiology relies on Luke-Acts. Or is it an orderly institution safeguarded in sound doctrine by clearly-defined offices of authority? Then your ecclesiology draws from the testimony of the Pastorals.

The remarkable (although I think not overwhelming) diversity of the biblical witness thus throws up a big question mark against any attempt to promote a univocal, normative teaching on church structure and authority. Should the church be governed congregationally, so that every member has an equal voice in decisions? Then a key text is I Corinthians 14:26. Or is the “biblical pattern” the entrusting of authority to a representative body of respected elders? You find your evidence in 1 Timothy 5:17.

Raymond Brown, the great North American Catholic New Testament scholar of the 20^th century, wrote a little book called The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (Multnomah, NY: Paulist Press, 1984) with the purpose of analyzing and presenting the different ecclesiologies in the New Testament that were provided as answers to how the Church may survive and function after the death of its first generation. Brown writes:

I approached a number of NT books looking for an answer, explicit or implicit, to a specific problem, namely: What were Christians in the Sub-Apostolic Period (the last one-third of the first century) being told that would enable their respective churches to survive the passing of the authoritative apostolic generation? There was no evidence in these works that a consistent or uniform ecclesiology had emerged. Rather, writings addressed to different NT communities had quite diverse emphases. (164)

Brown goes on to note that ultraconservatives of one sort reject this diversity in the NT in order to uphold a certain view of Scriptural inspiration, while ultraconservatives of another sort reject it out of a belief that Jesus planned the Church, the apostles were of one mind carrying out his orders, and only troublemakers differed concerning this plan.

This diversity thus stands in judgment over any bold claim that classical AS was instituted as the foundation of the Church from the very beginning, such that no fellowship was not recognized as a genuinely Christian community without an ordained successor of the apostles (through the laying on of hands) present.

In fact, a number of NT texts call this reading of the Church's origins into question, if not outright deny it. Two stories in Acts in particular have jumped out at me for their distinct lack of reference to AS where one would think it is necessary. In the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, Philip explains the meaning of Scripture and the gospel of Jesus and the eunuch asks to be baptized. In verse 39, when they come up out of the water, the Spirit snatches Philip away so that the eunuch sees him no more, and then the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. Presumably, the eunuch will return to Ethiopia and proclaim his newfound faith and worship Jesus as Messiah and Lord. But if he is indeed to worship and evangelize and extend the Church in his homeland, why did Philip not lay his hands on him and ordain him? It may be said claimed that Philip is only a deacon (although Acts 6 never specifies an “office” to which the seven Hellenists are appointed) but that still leaves the problem intact for classical AS: the eunuch departs to spread the faith in Ethiopia but lacks a “valid” succession.

Consider also the spread of the faith to Antioch in Acts 11:19-30. Barnabas, an assistant to the apostles who has no specified “office” in Acts, is dispatched by them from Jerusalem to investigate the outbreak of messianic belief. According to the passage, Hellenist Jewish-Christians scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen's death begin to tell the gospel to Greeks, leading to a great response. When news reaches Jerusalem, the mother church sends Barnabas, who encourages the new disciples, but who never, according to the text, lays hands on people to appoint presbyters or bishops to order church life, administer the sacraments, and ensure “valid” succession.

So the author of Luke-Acts depicts a Church dependent on the Spirit's guidance for its fundamental existence but not on a hierarchy in which the necessary community-ordering charism is handed down by an ordination rite. The same appears to be the case in some of the writings of Paul, particularly the Corinthian correspondence. He does speak of those appointed by God to be apostles and teachers, alongside other functions, in 1 Corinthians 12:27-31. Yet in his whole appeal to the factious Corinthians, I believe it is quite illuminating that he never calls them to obey an appointed bishop or presbyters set up by succession (as Ignatius repeatedly does half a century later to churches that are not even facing such turmoil). His letter is addressed to the church in Corinth (1:2) and not to a bishop at Corinth or body of elders. One would think that in a crisis such as this he should address officers appointed by his hand to provide sacramental efficacy and sound teaching, and yet he doesn't. Why, if from the beginning all Christian churches were ordered according to AS and why, if the bishop validates the community and is necessary for its rites and practices (as Ignatius states in Smyrnaeans) does Paul not call upon a bishop at Corinth to exercise Eucharistic discipline so that one social class does not binge at the Lord's Supper while another goes hungry (1 Corinthians 11:17-33)? It appears that Paul, the divinely appointed apostle to the Gentiles, does not have a developed or precise view of leadership in the church (cf. Andrew Chester, “The Pauline Communities,” in Markus Bockmuehl and Michael B. Thompson, eds. A Vision for the Church: Studies in Early Christian Ecclesiology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997).

2. Historical Gaps and Discrepancies

From the second century on, various Christian communities began to produce succession lists to validate their origins in the apostolic band. However, certain discrepancies plague these lists as various traditions contradict one another over the origin of a particular line. For example, Ignatius of Antioch is variously attributed as ordained directly by Paul (Theodoret, 393-457; [i]Dialogues I – The Immutable[/i]), directly by Peter (Apostolic Constitutions; late 4^th century; vii.46), or as second in line as bishop after Evodius ( Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History; iii.22). In the case of Clement, “bishop” of Rome, Irenaeus claims, incorrectly, that Peter and Paul founded the church at Rome (Against Heresies 3.3.2-3) and that Clement was the third bishop in line. Tertullian, meanwhile, asserts that Clement was appointed directly by Peter (Proscription against Heretics 32). Rome, however, did not have a monarchical episcopate at the time of Clement and so Irenaeus is anachronistically applying such a church structure. 1 Clement 4:2 only distinguishes between the presbyters and the laity, and the titles “bishop” and “presbyter” are used interchangeably throughout the letter (see 42:4, 44:4-5, 52:4).

Carlos Alfredo Steger, in his doctoral dissertation “ Apostolic Succession in the Writings of Yves Congar and Oscar Cullman” (Andrews University Seminary Doctoral Dissertation Series Volume 20. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews U Press, 1993), cites various figures for whom AS is a traditionally valid concept as noting the vacuum of real data concerning church structure and governance between the end of the first century and the emergence of the doctrine in Irenaeus in the late second century. Church of England bishop Charles Gore notes how “church history passes through a tunnel” and Anglican liturgical scholar Dom Gregory Dix notes a “gap in the evidence, which confronts all theories alike” (16). At the other end of the tunnel emerges Irenaeus' contra-Gnostic argument that the catholic Church has preserved the true teaching of the apostles by means of a succession that ensures the gift of truth (cf. AH 4.26.2). Even here Irenaeus does not fully describe the doctrine of AS as it comes to be sacramentally and hierarchically conceived in its most robust form – the succession is primarily to preserve pure teaching, which is done by means of a succession of presbyters alongside the episcopate (AH 3.2.2). For both Irenaeus and his near-contemporary Tertullian, what is important is the handing down of the faith, not a sacramental conferral of power via ordination (Steger 18). The notion of the charism wedded to the succession line appears to develop elsewhere and later.

Irenaeus is our earliest source for a clear doctrine of AS through the bishops as a guarantee of where the Church is properly found. Scholars tend to agree that this was a teaching he himself formulated in face of the Gnostic threat. “The notion of succession,” writes Steger, “was intended to confront the Gnostic challenge and to keep pure the apostolic message. It was conceived as a warranty against the intrusion of false traditions into the legitimate apostolic tradition” (48). A similar statement is made by Laurenti Magesa, a Roman Catholic (“Basic Christian Communities and the Apostolic Succession of the Church,” in African Ecclesial Review, 26 December 1984, 350). While I respect Irenaeus and believe he has some great things to say, the notion that he has conceived of the doctrine of AS has grounding in light of another argument he makes. For example, in AH 2.22.5 he argues that Christ was nearly fifty years old at the time of his crucifixion (not in his thirties, as Luke 3:23 indicates), and that this teaching is a tradition attested and handed down by the presbyters who were in Asia with the Apostle John. Irenaeus is the only one to have ever made such a claim for Christ's age, and it is clear he does so on theological grounds in order to make the most sense out of his doctrine of recapitulation (AH 2.22.3-4). Thus we have a clear case in which Irenaeus revises history in order to make a novel theological argument.

3. Ecumenical Developments

Finally, I reject the claim that AS, classically stated, is necessary to be Church because British Baptist theologian Paul Fiddes is not just blowing smoke when he writes:

There is a general agreement growing on the ecumenical scene that apostolic succession is not in the first place about handing on a particular ministry through the laying on of hands in an unbroken chain from the earliest apostles to today. Continuity is not, in its primary manifestation, about a strict sequence of one bishop ordaining another from the early days of the church to the present. Rather, it is about the succession in faith and life of the church as a whole.

• Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2003, 223).

Laurenti Magesa agrees, noting that AS in its most fundamental sense is the faithful preservation of apostolic tradition. Again, he is a Roman Catholic, but he argues that the present conception of AS as belonging exclusively to the hierarchy does not correspond to what we find in the NT, and that the notion developed in Asia Minor and Syria in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries to counter Gnostic heresies. Hans Küng, another Catholic, has argued AS involved the whole people of God and is inspired directly by the Spirit anew in each generation as the church renews itself in the witness of the apostles (cited in Veli-Marti Karkainnen, “Apostolicity of Free Churches: A Contradiction in Terms or an Ecumenical Breakthrough?” in European Journal of Theology 11:1, pg. 46). Raymond Brown notes that modern scholarship, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, has effectively challenged this classical notion of AS and has shown it to be a too simple picture and not universal to the experience and practice of the early Church (17). This is merely a list of Catholic voices speaking out against the necessity of AS as defining what and where Church is.

Veli-Marti Karkainnen, a Pentecostal theologian out of Fuller Seminary, notes that AS is being replaced with apostolicity in a broader, more holistic sense. “In modern discussions of the idea of apostolic succession,” he writes, “the insight has established itself that the primary issue is succession in the teaching and faith of the apostles and only secondarily is it a matter of succession in office” (43). The ecumenical document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, put out by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (and written primarily by my systematic theology professor, Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright), defines apostolicity as continuity in the permanent characteristics of the church of the apostles:

...witness to the apostolic faith, proclamation and fresh interpretation of the Gospel, celebration of baptism and the eucharist, the transmission of ministerial responsibilities, communion in prayer, love, joy and suffering, service to the sick and the needy, unity among the local churches and sharing the gifts which the Lord has given to each.

• Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982, M34)

As Steger notes, AS as ordination in a line of continuity is more and more recognized as a sign of this greater reality – AS does not strictly define nor replace the fullness of apostolicity (55). Apostolic succession is primarily the work of the people in fulfilling the mandate to which all have been called by God and which all have taken upon themselves by their common baptism – it is faithful re-telling and re-membering of the gospel story in each generation. It is a duty not of a select hierarchy, nor incumbent upon that hierarchy's presence for validation, but it is the active confession of the whole community centered on the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Labels: Ecumenism, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin on Monday, March 19, 2007 at Monday, March 19, 2007 | Permalink