Apostolic Succession

The Early Church

“What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

2 Timothy 2:2

The apostles died. That plain fact raises a question every Christian has to answer somehow: what happened to their authority? Either it died with them, and the Church was left with the books they wrote and nothing else, or it was handed on to men they appointed — in which case the Church has a living teaching office, and the question becomes what that office may claim.

Three things are really at issue here, and they are usually argued as one. Did the apostles leave successors, and does ordination descend in an unbroken line from them? Does the body of those successors, teaching together, speak with an authority a Christian is bound to accept — what Catholics call the Magisterium? And does one of them, the bishop of Rome, hold a primacy over the rest that is more than honorary?

Protestants answer the first cautiously and the other two firmly in the negative. Few deny that the apostles appointed elders; what is denied is that a chain of hands guarantees truth, that any man may bind the conscience of the Church, and that Scripture gives the bishop of Rome the position he claims. They point out that “bishop” and “elder” name the same office in the New Testament, that Paul withstood Peter to his face, that popes have contradicted popes, and that papal infallibility was not defined until 1870.

Jehovah’s Witnesses deny something prior. On their account the congregation was overrun by apostasy once the apostles were dead, so that the men on the episcopal lists were already teaching a corrupted faith and there was no faithful line to succeed to at all. Having rejected an inherited teaching office, though, they did not do without one: the “faithful and discreet slave” of Matthew 24:45 is identified with the Governing Body, appointed, on their reckoning, in 1919. Both cases are set out in the Protestant & Watchtower View panel.

The Catholic answer begins earlier than the arguments usually do — with what the apostles themselves did when one of their number died, which was to fill the office rather than mourn its loss. The Catholic View panel takes that up, along with the keys and the royal steward they allude to, the council at Jerusalem that wrote “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” the letters of the generation that knew the apostles personally, and what infallibility actually claims — which is a great deal less than it is usually taken to claim, and does not survive contact with Honorius or the Great Western Schism unless it is first stated correctly.

Two companion pages bear directly on this one. Whether Scripture alone is the rule of faith is argued at Is Sola Scriptura True?, and the Watchtower’s version of the same dispute — that the succession failed entirely and had to be restored in modern times — is taken up at Was There a Great Apostasy? and By What Authority?

I invite your engagement with me on this question. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Protestant & Watchtower View

The two objections here differ at the root, not at the edges. The Protestant grants that the apostles appointed elders and denies what is built on it — that a line of hands carries a guarantee of truth, that the bishops teaching together may bind the conscience, and that one of them holds universal jurisdiction. The Witness denies something prior: that there was any faithful line to succeed to at all, because the congregation apostatized once the apostles were dead. The Protestant case is set out first, then the Watchtower’s.

The Rule of Faith Is Scripture

Everything else follows from this. If Scripture is “God-breathed and profitable … that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17), then the Church has what she needs, and a further infallible authority is not merely unproven but unnecessary. The Bereans are commended for testing even an apostle’s preaching against the Scriptures (Acts 17:11) — which is exactly the posture a living Magisterium forbids.1

The Articles state the consequence without apology: General Councils “may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God,” and their decrees have force only so far as they can be shown to be taken out of Scripture. The full argument is on the companion page Is Sola Scriptura True?

Bishop and Elder Are the Same Office

The New Testament does not know the threefold ministry the argument requires. Paul tells Titus to appoint presbyters in every town and, in the next sentence, describes the qualifications of an episkopos — the same men under two names (Titus 1:5–7). He summons the elders of Ephesus and tells them the Holy Spirit has made them overseers of the flock (Acts 20:17, 28). Peter does the same (1 Pet. 5:1–2).

A single bishop ruling a city, distinct from and above the presbyters, appears in the second century, not the first. If the structure on which succession depends is itself a development, then the claim that it was instituted by Christ is a claim about history, and the history does not support it.2

The Rock, and What Was Built on It

The wordplay cuts both ways. Christ says “you are Peter” — Petros, a stone — “and on this rock” — petra, a rock mass — “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). The change of word is not nothing. Many Protestants read the rock as Peter’s confession rather than his person, and note that Paul knows only one foundation, Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:11), and that the rock in the wilderness was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4).

The apostles are a foundation, plural. The household of God is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). That is a college, not a monarch, and Revelation’s city has twelve foundations bearing twelve names (Rev. 21:14).

And Peter is not treated as one. Paul opposed him to his face at Antioch and says why: “he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11–14). At the Jerusalem council Peter speaks, but it is James who pronounces the judgment (Acts 15:13–21). The apostles send Peter and John to Samaria (Acts 8:14) — men are sent by superiors, not by subjects.

The Chain Has Broken Links

If succession guarantees what is claimed for it, the record ought to look better than it does. Pope Honorius I was condemned by name for heresy by the Third Council of Constantinople in 681, forty years after his death, and the anathema was repeated by his successors for centuries in the papal oath of office. Vigilius reversed himself twice under imperial pressure in the sixth century.3

Worse for the theory is the Great Western Schism. From 1378 to 1417 there were two lines of popes and then three, each duly elected, each excommunicating the others, and each commanding the allegiance of saints — Catherine of Siena on one side, Vincent Ferrer on the other. It was settled by a council which deposed the claimants and elected a fourth man, an act difficult to square with the doctrine that a pope has no earthly superior. For forty years no living Christian could say with certainty who the successor of Peter was.

Infallibility Was Defined in 1870

The doctrine that the pope teaches infallibly when he defines faith or morals for the whole Church was not defined until the First Vatican Council, and the council was convened by the man whose office it concerned. A teaching so fundamental to the Church’s constitution ought not to require eighteen centuries to be stated, and ought not to have been resisted by a substantial minority of the bishops present, some of whom left Rome rather than vote. The church historian Ignaz von Döllinger, the most learned Catholic scholar of his generation, was excommunicated for refusing it.4

And Every Believer Is a Priest

Behind the historical arguments lies a theological one that matters more. Peter tells ordinary Christians that they are “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Pet. 2:9), and John says Christ has made us “a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Rev. 1:6). The veil was torn from top to bottom. A believer comes to the Father through the Son, with no need of an ordained caste standing between — and any structure that obscures that has obscured the gospel, whatever its pedigree.5

The Watchtower Objection

Jehovah’s Witnesses do not argue about the terms of the succession. They deny that there is one. On their account the congregation Christ founded was overrun by apostasy within a generation of the apostles’ deaths, so that by the time the episcopal lists were being drawn up the men on them were already teaching a corrupted faith. A line of ordination running back to the apostles through such men would prove nothing, because what was handed down was not what the apostles taught. The full argument is treated on the companion page Was There a Great Apostasy?6

Peter was never a pope. The Watchtower holds that Scripture gives him no primacy of jurisdiction: he is sent by the apostles to Samaria rather than sending them, James pronounces the decision at Jerusalem, and Paul withstands him at Antioch. The rock on which the congregation is built is Christ Himself, and Peter is a stone among stones. Nor, on this reading, does Scripture place Peter in Rome or give any man a title of universal authority.7

And no man is to be called Father. Christ forbade His followers to take religious titles — “call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Matt. 23:9), and “you are not to be called rabbi” (v. 8). The Watchtower reads this as excluding not only the papal title but the whole apparatus of clerical rank. There is no ordained priesthood among Jehovah’s Witnesses, no clergy distinct from laity, and no honorific: every baptized Witness is a minister, and elders in a congregation are unpaid and untitled.

What they put in its place. The Watchtower does not conclude that the congregation is without a teaching authority. It holds that Christ appointed a “faithful and discreet slave” to distribute spiritual food at the proper time (Matt. 24:45–47), identifies that slave with the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and dates the appointment to 1919. The authority claimed is therefore not a lineage of ordination but a direct appointment in the modern era, and the direction it issues is to be accepted by the worldwide congregation. That claim is examined on the companion page By What Authority?8

Endnotes
  1. On Scripture as the sufficient rule, see the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), I.6, and the Thirty-Nine Articles, VI. On councils, Articles XXI: “General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes … they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.” ↩
  2. On the interchange of presbyteros and episkopos, Titus 1:5–7; Acts 20:17 with 20:28; 1 Peter 5:1–2; Philippians 1:1, which greets “bishops and deacons” with no third order. The development of the single bishop is traced by J. B. Lightfoot in his dissertation “The Christian Ministry” appended to his commentary on Philippians (1868). ↩
  3. Third Council of Constantinople (680–681), Session XIII, which anathematizes Honorius by name; the condemnation was confirmed by Pope Leo II. On Vigilius and the Three Chapters controversy, see the acts of the Second Council of Constantinople (553). ↩
  4. First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus (1870). On the minority, some sixty bishops departed Rome before the final vote rather than record a negative. Ignaz von Döllinger was excommunicated in 1871; those who followed him formed the Old Catholic churches. ↩
  5. 1 Peter 2:5, 9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10; Hebrews 4:16 and 10:19–22 on confident access. See also Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), on the priesthood of all the baptized. ↩
  6. On the apostasy following the apostles’ deaths, see “Was There a Great Apostasy?” and related articles (jw.org), citing Acts 20:29–30; 2 Thessalonians 2:3–7; 2 Timothy 4:3–4. The Watchtower holds that the true congregation was obscured rather than annihilated, and was restored in the modern era. ↩
  7. On Peter’s standing, see “Was Peter the First Pope?” (jw.org), citing Acts 8:14; 15:13–19; Galatians 2:11–14; 1 Peter 5:1, where Peter calls himself a fellow elder. On the rock of Matthew 16:18, the Watchtower identifies it with Jesus, citing 1 Corinthians 10:4 and 1 Peter 2:4–8. ↩
  8. On the “faithful and discreet slave,” see The Watchtower, 15 July 2013, which identifies the slave with the Governing Body and dates the appointment over Christ’s belongings to 1919. On titles, “Call No Man Your Father” and related articles (jw.org), citing Matthew 23:8–10. ↩

Catholic View

The Catholic claim is that Christ founded a visible Church with officers, that those officers were empowered to appoint others, and that the office has never lapsed. From that follows everything else: a college of bishops who teach with His authority, and among them a successor of Peter who holds the keys. The case does not begin with a medieval council. It begins with what the apostles themselves did in the ten days after the Ascension.

The Office Outlived the Man

Judas died, and the eleven did not treat the number as reduced by one. Peter stands up, applies a psalm to the situation — “his office let another take” (Ps. 109:8) — and they elect Matthias in his place (Acts 1:15–26). The Greek word Peter quotes is episkope: the overseership, the bishopric. Before a word of the New Testament was written, the apostles had established that what Christ gave them was an office, and that an office outlives the man holding it.1

That is the whole principle in one paragraph, and it is worth noticing where it comes from. Not from Rome, not from the second century, and not from an argument about authority — but from the apostles solving a practical problem the only way that occurred to them.

Paul Built It Into the Structure

Paul does not treat the transmission as an emergency measure. He leaves Titus in Crete precisely to “appoint elders in every town as I directed you” (Titus 1:5). He reminds Timothy of the gift conferred by the laying on of hands (2 Tim. 1:6; 1 Tim. 4:14) and warns him not to be hasty in laying hands on anyone (1 Tim. 5:22) — a warning that presupposes the act confers something worth being careful about.

And in one verse he lays out four generations: what Timothy heard from Paul, he is to entrust to faithful men, who will teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2). Paul, Timothy, the faithful men, the others. That is succession described, in the very letter Protestants quote for the sufficiency of Scripture.

As for whether “bishop” and “elder” were once interchangeable words — they plainly were, and the Church has never denied it. Titles settle less than the objection needs. What matters is whether apostolic authority was handed on, and Timothy and Titus are exercising it: ordaining, correcting doctrine, judging accusations against elders. Whatever they were called, they were doing a bishop’s work by appointment.

The Generation That Knew Them Says So

The witnesses here are unusually early. Clement, writing from Rome to Corinth about the year 96 — while the apostle John was probably still alive — says the apostles knew there would be strife over the office of bishop, and therefore appointed successors and gave instruction that when those died, other approved men should succeed to their ministry. That is not an inference; it is a statement of what the apostles arranged, by a man in a position to know.2

Notice also what Clement is doing. He is a Roman bishop writing to a church in Greece, intervening in its internal quarrel, telling it to reinstate deposed presbyters, and expecting to be obeyed. Corinth had an apostle’s letters of its own and John was far closer geographically. Rome wrote anyway.

Irenaeus, about 180, makes the argument explicit against the Gnostics: the apostolic churches can name their bishops in order from the apostles, and he lists the Roman line from Linus down to his own day. The Gnostics could produce no such list, which was his point. A century later the same test was still being applied, and it only works if everyone concerned already accepted that succession was the mark of a true church.3

The Keys, and the Royal Steward

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Matt. 16:19). The image is not invented for the occasion. It comes from Isaiah, where God removes the steward Shebna from office and gives his position to Eliakim: “I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut” (Isa. 22:20–22).

Two things follow. The steward of a royal house is not the king; he governs in the king’s absence and by the king’s authority, which is exactly what Catholics claim and exactly what the objection usually assumes they do not. And the office in Isaiah has a succession — the whole passage is about one man replacing another in it. Christ hands Peter an office His hearers already knew to be transferable.4

On the wordplay: Christ was speaking Aramaic, where there is one word, Kepha, and John preserves it (John 1:42). Greek forced the shift, because petra is feminine and would make an odd man’s name. And if the rock were merely Peter’s confession, the renaming makes no sense — nobody is given a new name to commemorate somebody else’s foundation. That Paul rebuked him at Antioch is beside the point; the rebuke was about conduct, not teaching, and popes have been rebuked by saints ever since without anyone concluding the office was vacant.

A Church That Decides

The clearest evidence that the apostles thought they could settle a question is that they did. A doctrinal dispute arises over circumcising Gentile converts — a question on which Scripture, as it then stood, was not obviously on their side. They do not appeal to a text. They convene, argue, and issue a decree, and the decree says: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28).

Then they send it to churches that had sent no delegates, as binding. Whatever that is, it is a living teaching authority claiming the Holy Spirit’s backing for a decision, which is precisely what a Magisterium is. And Luke reports it without a hint that it was extraordinary.

What Infallibility Is Not

Most of the historical objections dissolve once the doctrine is stated as the Church states it rather than as the polemic states it. Infallibility is not impeccability — it says nothing about a pope’s holiness, and the tenth century is exactly the embarrassment it appears to be. It is not inspiration: no pope receives new revelation, and the definition explicitly denies it. It is a negative protection, in narrow conditions, that a pope defining a doctrine of faith or morals for the whole Church will not define error. In that solemn form it has been used twice.5

Honorius. He was condemned, and Catholics should say so plainly. But read what for: he failed to suppress an error and let the Church be troubled by his silence. He defined nothing. His two letters were private correspondence which he never proposed as binding on anyone — the case is a demonstration of the doctrine’s limits rather than a breach of it, and Leo II, confirming the condemnation, said exactly that: negligence, not false teaching.

The Great Western Schism. Forty years of genuine confusion, and nobody pretends otherwise. But notice what was disputed: not whether there is a successor of Peter, but which of three men was he. That is a crisis about a fact, and no doctrine promises that the fact will always be easy to establish. Saints were on opposite sides because the question was genuinely hard, which is an argument about the visibility of the office, not its existence.

And 1870. Doctrines are defined when they are denied — that is the pattern of every council. Nicaea defined the divinity of Christ in 325 and nobody concludes He was not divine in 324. The canon of Scripture was fixed in the fourth century. The definition of 1870 followed Gallicanism and the pressure of the modern state on the Church, and it settled a question those movements had raised.

And the Canon Comes Back

There is one difficulty the objection cannot walk around. Nothing in Scripture lists the books of Scripture. The table of contents in every Protestant Bible was received from the fourth-century Church — from councils of bishops, exercising exactly the authority being denied. To keep the canon while rejecting the authority that identified it is to trust the Church’s judgment on the most important question it ever decided and no other. That argument is developed at Is Sola Scriptura True?

The Watchtower’s Version, and What It Costs

The Witness objection is not a stronger form of the Protestant one. It is a different claim, and it has to carry a much heavier load. To say that no succession is worth anything because the congregation apostatized is to say that Christ’s Church failed — that the gates of hell did prevail, for something like eighteen centuries, over the thing He promised they would not. That is a large thing to assert, and it is asserted without a date, a place, or the name of a man who resisted the change. It is answered at length on Was There a Great Apostasy?

What deserves noticing here is narrower. Having rejected a teaching authority handed on from the apostles, the Watchtower did not do without one. It identifies the “faithful and discreet slave” with its own Governing Body, dates the appointment to 1919, and expects its direction to be accepted throughout the worldwide congregation. So the dispute is not really whether Christ left a teaching office. Both sides say He did. The dispute is whether that office has a documented line running back to men who knew Him, or begins in Pennsylvania in the twentieth century with no line at all.

And on titles: “call no man your father” (Matt. 23:9) cannot be a rule about the word, or Paul broke it — “I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15) — and so did Stephen addressing the council, and John writing to the fathers of his congregations. What Christ forbids in that chapter is the appetite the Pharisees had for place and honor, which He names three verses earlier. A rule against the syllable would convict the New Testament.6

The Reply in Brief

The apostles’ first recorded act after the Ascension was to fill a vacant office. Paul spent his last letters arranging for men to be appointed and for those men to appoint others. Clement, a generation later, says the apostles set it up that way deliberately, foreseeing the quarrel. Irenaeus could recite the list. None of this is a later accretion argued into the record; it is the record.

What the objections establish is that the men holding the office have often been poor, sometimes wicked, and occasionally impossible to identify. All of that is true and none of it is news — Christ chose Judas, and Peter denied Him before the office was three years old. The promise was never that the successors would be good men. It was that the gates of hell would not prevail, which is a promise about the Church surviving them.

If the office is real, then the question “by what authority?” has an answer that can be traced, named, and checked against the documents — and the references in the sidebar are where to begin checking. The companion pages on the Great Apostasy and sola scriptura take up the two ways the claim is most often denied.

Endnotes
  1. Acts 1:15–26, quoting Psalm 109:8 (Ps. 108:8 LXX). The Greek at Acts 1:20 is ten episkopen autou labeto heteros — “let another take his overseership.” ↩
  2. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 42–44 (c. A.D. 96): the apostles “appointed those already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.” Text in William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 1. ↩
  3. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.1–3 (c. A.D. 180), which gives the succession of the Roman church from Linus to Eleutherius. On Irenaeus’s own link to the apostle John through Polycarp, 3.3.4. See also Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians 3 and Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8 (c. A.D. 107), on doing nothing apart from the bishop. ↩
  4. Isaiah 22:15–25, where Shebna is deposed and Eliakim invested with the key, the robe, and the title “father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” The binding-and-loosing formula of Matthew 16:19 is repeated to the apostles collectively at Matthew 18:18, which is the basis of the Catholic distinction between the college and its head. ↩
  5. First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus (1870), ch. 4, which states that the Holy Spirit was promised to Peter’s successors “not that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation.” The two undisputed exercises of the solemn form are Ineffabilis Deus (1854) and Munificentissimus Deus (1950). See also Catechism of the Catholic Church §§888–892. On Honorius, Leo II’s letter confirming the condemnation charges him with permitting the faith to be stained by negligence rather than with teaching error. ↩
  6. Matthew 23:1–12, where the rebuke is aimed at men who “love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues” (v. 6). On the apostolic use of the term, 1 Corinthians 4:15; Philippians 2:22; 1 Thessalonians 2:11; 1 John 2:13–14; and Acts 7:2, where Stephen addresses the Sanhedrin as “brethren and fathers.” Paul also calls himself the father of Onesimus (Philem. 10). ↩

Summary

Protestants grant that the apostles appointed elders but deny that a line of ordination guarantees truth, that any bishop may bind the conscience of the Church, or that the bishop of Rome holds the position he claims. Jehovah’s Witnesses deny that there was any faithful line to succeed to, the congregation having been overrun by apostasy once the apostles died. The Catholic Church holds that Christ founded a visible Church with officers, that the office has never lapsed, and that the bishops teaching together with Peter’s successor speak with His authority.

The apostles filled the vacant office themselves. When Judas died, the eleven did not treat their number as permanently reduced. Peter applies a psalm to it — “his office let another take” — and Matthias is elected (Acts 1:15–26). The word Peter quotes is episkope, the overseership. Before a line of the New Testament was written, the apostles had established that what Christ gave them was an office, and that an office outlives the man.

Paul arranged for it to continue. He left Titus in Crete to appoint elders in every town (Titus 1:5), warned Timothy against laying on hands hastily (1 Tim. 5:22), and set out four generations in a single verse: what Timothy heard from Paul he is to entrust to faithful men, who will teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2). That is succession described, in the letter most often quoted for the sufficiency of Scripture.

The generation that knew them says so plainly. Clement, writing from Rome to Corinth about the year 96, says the apostles foresaw strife over the office and therefore provided that when their appointees died, other approved men should succeed to their ministry. Irenaeus, about 180, could recite the Roman line from Linus — and used the fact as a test the Gnostics could not pass.

The keys came with a precedent. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Matt. 16:19) borrows the image of the royal steward in Isaiah, where God removes Shebna and gives the key of the house of David to Eliakim (Isa. 22:20–22). A steward is not the king; he governs in the king’s absence. And that office visibly passes from one man to another, which is the point of the passage.

Acts 15 shows the authority in use. Faced with a question Scripture did not settle, the apostles convened, argued, and issued a decree beginning “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28) — then sent it as binding to churches that had sent no delegates. Luke reports it without a hint that it was unusual.

Infallibility claims far less than it is charged with. Not impeccability — the tenth-century papacy is exactly the embarrassment it appears to be. Not inspiration: the definition expressly denies that any new doctrine is revealed. It is a negative protection, in narrow conditions, and in that solemn form it has been used twice. Honorius was condemned for silence, not for defining error; the Great Western Schism was a dispute about which man was pope, not whether there is one.

The Watchtower objection carries a heavier load. To say no succession is worth anything because the congregation apostatized is to say the gates of hell did prevail, for some eighteen centuries — asserted without a date, a place, or the name of anyone who resisted. And having rejected an inherited teaching office, the Watchtower installed one of its own, dated to 1919. The dispute is not whether Christ left a teaching office; it is whether that office has a line running back to men who knew Him.

And the canon returns the question. No book of Scripture lists the books of Scripture. The table of contents in every Protestant Bible was received from fourth-century councils of bishops — exercising the authority being denied.

In short: the promise was never that the successors would be good men. Christ chose Judas, and Peter denied Him before the office was three years old. It was that the gates of hell would not prevail — which is a promise about the Church surviving them.

See also Is Sola Scriptura True? on the rule of faith, and Was There a Great Apostasy? on the claim that the succession failed altogether.