Apostolic Succession
For Inquirers
Imagine a family that has kept the same house for two thousand years, each generation handing it on to the next. Apostolic succession is the Church's claim to be that kind of family. The first leaders of the Christian community were twelve men Jesus personally sent out, the apostles. The Church teaches that they chose and prayed over other men to look after the churches they planted, that those men did the same for the next, and that this handing-on has gone on from then until now. The men at the head of the line are called bishops, and a bishop today is understood to stand in it: someone laid hands on him, someone laid hands on that man, and so back to the apostles.
Early Christians lived among teachers who claimed to know secret things about Jesus that nobody else had heard, and an ordinary believer needed some way to tell the real message from an invention. St. Irenaeus, a bishop, answered such teachers by pointing to the churches the apostles had founded, to the men who had led them since, and to what those churches still taught.[^behr-primer] A public line of named leaders can be compared with what each church teaches, and a private tradition offers nothing to compare.
The chain hands on a task and a message together. A man can stand in the line of hands and still teach badly, and Orthodox teaching says that a bishop who abandons the apostles' faith has not kept the succession in the full sense, because the line of hands is meant to serve the message. The words for the leaders were used loosely at first: the New Testament sometimes calls the same men "elders" and "overseers," and the familiar pattern of one bishop in each city can be seen in the churches Ignatius of Antioch wrote to in the early second century. Thoughtful Christians weigh all this differently, and Orthodox Christians tend to say the chain carries a great deal of weight, because they believe the Church is one living body across time rather than a collection of good ideas that each generation has to rediscover.
Overview
- Apostolic succession is the Church's claim that her bishops stand in an unbroken line, by prayer and the laying on of hands, from the apostles Christ sent out.
- OrthodoxWiki describes it as three things held together: ordination handed down from the apostles, Orthodox doctrine, and full communion with the other bishops of the Church.
- The New Testament shows the apostles appointing local leaders with prayer and the laying on of hands, and charging them to pass on what they had heard. It also uses "overseer" (bishop) and "elder" (presbyter) of the same men in several places, and six of the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch speak of a bishop, with presbyters and deacons, in the church addressed; his letter to Rome names no bishop there.
- A valid line of hands does not by itself make a bishop's teaching true. OrthodoxWiki states that Orthodox churches also require a bishop to maintain Orthodox doctrine and full communion with the other Orthodox bishops.
Summary
In Orthodox teaching the apostles were sent by Christ, and they in turn chose successors for the churches they founded, so that the gospel and the sacramental life of the Church would be handed on in person from one generation to the next. A letter from the church of Rome to the church of Corinth, ascribed to Clement, says that the apostles "appointed" men to office and "afterwards gave instructions" that approved men should succeed them, in one translation, and other translators render the passage differently.[^clem44] By the second century the bishops of the great churches were being named in lists, and Hegesippus, Irenaeus and Tertullian each point to the succession in the churches the apostles founded, against teachers who offered opinions of their own or a private tradition.[^heg22] Tertullian adds a second test: a church is apostolic if it teaches what the apostles taught, even when none of the apostles founded it.[^tert32]
Fr. Michael Pomazansky describes the ministry as established by Christ and, in the apostolic period, organized in three degrees, bishop, priest and deacon.[^pom-three] How that shape grew out of the New Testament's looser vocabulary is an open historical question, and two readings of it, one from Pomazansky and Chrysostom and one from McGuckin, are set side by side below.
What the Church Claims
The phrase is often heard as a claim about plumbing, as though ordination were a pipe through which something flows from one bishop to the next. OrthodoxWiki describes apostolic succession as the tracing of "a direct line of apostolic ordination, Orthodox doctrine, and full communion from the Apostles to the current episcopacy of the Orthodox Church," and adds that all three elements are constitutive.[^ow] The line of hands is one strand. A bishop who keeps the hands but throws away the doctrine, or who is cut off from the other bishops, does not carry the succession in the Orthodox sense.
The bishops, priests and deacons, the Orthodox Church in America says, "guarantee the continuity and unity of the Church from age to age and from place to place from the time of Christ and the apostles."[^oca] That continuity runs through persons, and the same source is careful about what it does not make depend on them: it teaches that "the reality and effectiveness of the sacraments of the Church ministered by the clergy do not depend upon the personal virtue of the ministers, but upon the presence of Christ who acts in his Church by the Holy Spirit."[^oca2] The clergy do not stand in for an absent Lord; they are the place where a present Lord does what he does, and the Church's confidence in the line is confidence in him. Fr. Michael Pomazansky puts the matter in his own terms when he calls the succession from the apostles and the unbroken line of bishops "one of the essential sides of the Church."[^pom-hier]
The Apostles Choose and Appoint
The first act of succession in the New Testament is a replacement. After Judas fell away, Peter stood among about a hundred and twenty disciples and cited the psalm, "Let another take his office" (Acts 1.20). The requirement was that of a witness, a man who had been with the company from the baptism of John until the Ascension and could "become a witness with us of his resurrection" (Acts 1.21-22). They put forward two men, and then they prayed:
“You, Lord, who know the hearts of all men, show which one of these two you have chosen to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas fell away ...” (Acts 1.24-25)
The lot fell on Matthias, "and he was counted with the eleven apostles" (Acts 1.26). The office exists apart from any one holder, it is filled by a man God is asked to choose, and the community takes part by nominating. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on the passage, observes that Peter "does everything with the common consent; nothing imperiously."[^chrys-acts3] In his reading this is Peter as the first man who ordained a teacher, acting with the others' consent although he held the same power to ordain as they all did together.
The pattern then moves outward from Jerusalem. When the Twelve want the work of serving tables handled, they ask the assembly to select seven men "of good report, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom" (Acts 6.3). The assembly chooses, and the apostles pray and lay on hands: after the seven are set before them, "When they had prayed, they laid their hands on them" (Acts 6.6). At Antioch the Holy Spirit tells the prophets and teachers to separate Barnabas and Saul, and they "fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them" before sending them out (Acts 13.2-3). When Paul and Barnabas retrace their steps through the cities of Asia Minor, they do what the apostles do:
“When they had appointed elders for them in every assembly, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they had believed.” (Acts 14.23)
Pomazansky takes the Greek word behind "appointed" (cheirotonisantes) to mean ordination by the laying on of hands, and he concludes that "this ordination was not merely a rite or a sign, but was the communication of a special gift."[^pom-priest] That reading rests on his gloss of the Greek word, since the verse itself says only "appointed" and "prayed with fasting." What the verse shows without any gloss is that the apostles did not leave new churches leaderless. They installed men, with prayer, and handed them to the Lord.
Elders and Overseers
In Acts the men Paul appoints in the churches are elders (presbyteroi), and when he sends from Miletus to Ephesus he calls together "the elders of the assembly" (Acts 20.17). Speaking to those same men he says that the Holy Spirit "has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood" (Acts 20.28). The word translated "overseers" is episkopos, the word from which the English "bishop" descends.[^mcg-bishop] In Titus the same overlap appears. Paul tells Titus he left him in Crete to "appoint elders in every city," lists the qualifications for an elder, and goes on, "the overseer must be blameless, as God’s steward" (Titus 1.5, Titus 1.7), as though the two words named one office. In Philippians he writes "to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and servants" (Philippians 1.1), and "servants" there is the word that became deacon. Peter, "as a fellow elder," exhorts the elders to "shepherd the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight" (1 Peter 5.1-2), so that the verb of oversight is addressed to men called elders.
The Pastoral Epistles also show Timothy and Titus doing things that later belong to a bishop. Timothy is told, "Lay hands hastily on no one" (1 Timothy 5.22), and is given rules for honoring the elders who "rule well" and for hearing accusations against them (1 Timothy 5.17, 1 Timothy 5.19). Two verses speak of a gift he received through the laying on of hands. In the first letter it is "the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the elders" (1 Timothy 4.14), and in the second "the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands" (2 Timothy 1.6). Pomazansky reads both verses as Timothy's ordination, by Paul himself or, as he puts it, by "an assembly of the eldest clergy under the presidency of the Apostle Paul."[^pom-priest-tim] Chrysostom, preaching on the first letter, reads the "presbytery" of 1 Timothy 4.14 as bishops, a difference taken up below. The charge that follows gives the whole idea its shape:
“The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit the same things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Timothy 2.2)
There are four generations in that sentence: Paul, Timothy, the faithful men, and the others they will teach. It names a chain of teaching without giving a single list of names, and it comes in a letter that tells Timothy to guard the good thing committed to him "through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us" (2 Timothy 1.14).
What the texts do not say is whether, in the churches of Ephesus and Crete, there was one man who held a higher office than the elders, or whether Timothy and Titus were temporary delegates of the apostle. Two readings of that question appear under their own heading below.
Clement of Rome: Appointment and Provision
A letter from the church of Rome to Corinth, which Eusebius ascribes to Clement, speaks directly of succession.[^eus3-15] The Corinthians had removed some of their leaders, and Clement answers by going back to the source of authority and walking down the line:
“Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ.” Letter to the Corinthians (Clement) 42.2
That is a chain of sending with two links before the apostles' own preaching begins. Clement then says that the apostles appointed "the first fruits (of their labors), having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe," as they preached through countries and cities.[^clem42] The office, in his telling, comes with the first preaching. He adds that this was no novelty and quotes the prophet, "I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith." Letter to the Corinthians (Clement) 42.7 God orders his people through appointed officers, as he did in the tabernacle, and Clement spends a chapter on the rod of Aaron that budded to end a quarrel over the priesthood.
Then comes the passage that speaks of succession itself. The apostles, Clement says, foresaw strife over the bishop's office, and for that reason
“they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.” Letter to the Corinthians (Clement) 44.2
The text and translation of this sentence are disputed. Lightfoot, in his edition, renders the whole passage differently:
“And our Apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the name of the bishop's office. For this cause therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, and afterwards they provided a continuance, that if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministration.”[^clem44-lf]
Where the Ante-Nicene translation has the apostles giving instructions, Lightfoot has them providing a continuance, and where the first has strife over the office of the episcopate, Lightfoot has strife over the name of the bishop's office. On both, the apostles arranged for approved men to succeed to the ministry of those first appointed, and a reader who builds more than that on one wording should know that the sentence is contested.
The sentence that follows concerns men "appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole church," who served the flock of Christ blamelessly and ought not to be dismissed from the ministry.[^clem44b] Succession here is a provision made in advance for the peace of the church, and it is guarded on two sides: the successors come by appointment from men of standing, and they come with the consent of the whole community. Two cautions belong with the passage. Clement writes about one quarrel in one church, and he gives no list of names and does not say that a particular man stands at the head of a particular line. His vocabulary is also still that of Acts. In the same chapter he speaks of those who have fulfilled the episcopate and then of "those presbyters" who have gone before, and later he tells the Corinthians to "submit yourselves to the presbyters." Letter to the Corinthians (Clement) 57.1 Within this letter the two titles seem to name the same men, which is the point the question of development will have to take up.
Ignatius and Polycarp: The Bishop in the Assembly
In the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, written to the churches of Asia Minor on his way to martyrdom in Rome, the picture is of a single bishop presiding in each church addressed, with presbyters and deacons around him. McGuckin dates his arrest to the year 105.[^mcg-ign] Ignatius names the bishops of Ephesus (Onesimus), Magnesia (Damas), Tralles (Polybius) and Smyrna (Polycarp), and the letter to the Philadelphians speaks of their bishop without naming him.[^ign-names] The letter to the Romans is different: Ignatius calls himself "the bishop of Syria," mentions no bishop of Rome, and asks the Romans to remember the church in Syria, which has Jesus Christ alone to oversee it in his absence.[^ign-rom] Six of the seven letters, then, speak of a bishop in the church addressed, and to the Magnesians Ignatius sums up the three ranks as a whole:
“...while your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ.” The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians 6.1
In this letter the bishop is the figure of God and the presbyters are the figure of the apostles, so Ignatius is not here calling the bishop the apostles' successor. The Trallians are given the same picture in a single sentence: all are to "reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, ... and the presbyters as the sanhedrim of God, and assembly of the apostles." The Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians 3.1 In the next sentence he says what hangs on it: "Apart from these, there is no Church." The Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians 3.2 His chief concern is the unity of the assembly around the Eucharist, and his instruction is practical:
“See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God.” The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 8.1
He goes on to say that a proper Eucharist is one administered by the bishop or by someone he has authorized, that baptism and the love-feast likewise belong to the bishop's oversight, and that “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”[^ign-smyr8] In these letters the bishop appears first as the center of a church's worship.
In the seven letters Ignatius never speaks of one bishop succeeding another, and he argues the bishop's authority from his place in the assembly and from his likeness to Christ and the Father. The letters do say that the bishops of the world are there by Christ's will: Jesus Christ is “the (manifested) will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds (of the earth), are so by the will of Jesus Christ.” To the Ephesians 3.6 He also urges the Magnesians to “be established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles.”[^ign-mag13] The bishop he describes holds an office that is God's gift to the church, with teaching held to the apostles' standard, and in the letter to the Philadelphians he says their bishop did not obtain it of himself.[^ign-phil1]
The letter of St. Polycarp to the Philippians is written in the name of “Polycarp, and the presbyters with him,” and its instructions to the clergy speak of presbyters and deacons.[^pol] Ignatius, however, addresses Polycarp as bishop of Smyrna. A reader can take the salutation to mean that Polycarp wrote as the head of a body of presbyters, or that the word “bishop” was used less in some places than in others, and the letter does not decide between them.
Eusebius, writing in the fourth century, reports that Polycarp had been “entrusted with the episcopate of the church of Smyrna by those who had seen and heard the Lord.” He says of Ignatius at the same point that he was chosen bishop of Antioch “second in succession to Peter.”[^eus3-36] For Eusebius, then, the two men stood in a succession that reached back to eyewitnesses of Jesus and to Peter, whatever title Polycarp used in his own letter.
Irenaeus, who as a boy heard Polycarp, calls him “that blessed and apostolic presbyter,” a title that fits the salutation of his letter. What Irenaeus recalls is the link to eyewitnesses: Polycarp “would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord.”[^iren-flor]
Lists of Bishops: Hegesippus and Eusebius
In the second century the argument takes a new form, which is the list. Eusebius, writing in the fourth century and drawing on earlier writers, preserves a good deal of it. The first bishops of the great sees appear in his Book III with their years in office: Linus, “the first to obtain the episcopate of the church at Rome” after Peter and Paul; Annianus at Alexandria, followed by Abilius; Clement as third at Rome; Ignatius as second at Antioch after Evodius; Symeon, the Lord's cousin, chosen at Jerusalem after James by “those of the apostles and disciples of the Lord that were still living.”[^eus3] He says of Timothy and Titus that “Timothy, so it is recorded, was the first to receive the episcopate of the parish in Ephesus, Titus of the churches in Crete,”[^eus3-4] which shows how a fourth-century reader understood the Pastoral Epistles.
Among the writers Eusebius quotes on this is Hegesippus, who traveled to Rome and, in Eusebius's summary, “met a great many bishops, and … received the same doctrine from all.” Eusebius gives Hegesippus's own words:
“And when I had come to Rome I remained there until Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. And Anicetus was succeeded by Soter, and he by Eleutherus. In every succession, and in every city that is held which is preached by the law and the prophets and the Lord.”[^heg22b]
The succession is attached to its content, since what is held in every city is what the law, the prophets and the Lord proclaimed. Hegesippus also tells how Symeon was made bishop at Jerusalem after the martyrdom of James, and says that until then the Church had not been “corrupted by vain discourses.” Thebuthis, he says, began to corrupt it “because he was not made bishop.”[^heg22c] Hegesippus sets the office and the doctrine side by side in both places: the Roman succession is tied to what the law, the prophets and the Lord preach, and the beginning of corruption at Jerusalem is traced to a man passed over for the office. The only list of bishops Hegesippus gives in the passage quoted above is the three Roman names; the longer lists of the great sees come from Eusebius's own account in Book III.
Irenaeus: The Succession Against the Secret Teachers
St. Irenaeus of Lyons builds the lists into an argument. His argument from succession stands in Book III of Against Heresies, which is quoted here as Robert Arakaki and John Behr give it; the rest of the picture is drawn from Book I and from fragments of his other writings. Irenaeus was answering teachers whom he charges with claiming secret teaching handed down privately from the apostles, and his concern in Book III, in Behr's words, is “to counter the Gnostic claims to possess secret, oral traditions.”[^behr-secret] His reply was that the apostles' successors in the churches were public and known.
Arakaki quotes the passage in which Irenaeus says that the apostles' tradition “can be clearly seen in every church by those who wish to behold the truth.”[^iren3] The Church, Irenaeus continues, can enumerate the bishops the apostles established in the churches and their successors down to his own time. At the end of his list of the bishops of Rome, which Arakaki quotes elsewhere, he concludes: “In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us.”[^iren3b]
For Behr, Irenaeus sets scripture, the canon of truth, apostolic tradition and apostolic succession side by side as a single framework, because their coherence “lies in nothing other than the proclamation of the crucified and exalted Christ ‘in accordance with scripture.’”[^behr1]
What the apostles taught in public, on Behr's account, was “identical to what they wrote down”; Irenaeus can even imagine a case in which they left nothing in writing, and there too, Behr says, the tradition he appeals to is the same as what the apostles wrote. His appeal to succession is therefore, in Behr's words, “fundamentally different” from that of his opponents, who appealed to tradition for what was not in scripture.[^behr1b]
Irenaeus appeals, in Behr's words, to “the successions of the bishops or presbyters (the terms were still used interchangeably by him).”[^behr2] For Behr, then, the two titles named the same men. A fragment of Irenaeus about the dispute over the fast confirms it, naming Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus and Sixtus as “the presbyters preceding Soter in the government of the Church.”[^iren-frag3] Irenaeus is calling the bishops of Rome presbyters.
Book I, chapter 10 of Against Heresies does not speak of succession; it shows what the succession is there to protect, which is one faith received from the apostles. Irenaeus describes a faith that the Church has “received from the apostles and their disciples.” Against Heresies — Chapter 10 1.1 Having received it, the Church, “as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it.” Against Heresies — Chapter 10 2.1 The agreement of the churches in Germany, Spain, Gaul, the East, Egypt and Libya is his evidence that the tradition has been kept. He adds that the leaders of the churches are bound by the same faith:
“Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master).” Against Heresies — Chapter 10 2.6
The ruler in the church does not own the faith; he stands under it. Book I shows the unity of the faith received from the apostles, and the link between that faith and the succession of bishops is made in Book III, in the passages Arakaki and Behr quote above.
Tertullian: Two Tests
Tertullian, writing at Carthage around the turn of the third century, turns the argument into a challenge. He tells the heretics that if they claim to belong to the apostolic age they must show it:
“Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that (that first bishop of theirs) bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men.” Prescription against Heretics 32.1
He names the churches that can do this: Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed there by John, and Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained by Peter.[^tert32b] Then he adds a second test that carries as much weight as the first. Churches that cannot name an apostolic founder, because they were planted much later, are still apostolic if they hold the same faith:
“...yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine.” Prescription against Heretics 32.8
The same principle is in the twentieth chapter, where the apostles founded churches in every city and the later churches “derived the tradition of the faith” from them, so that “it is on this account only that they will be able to deem themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of apostolic churches.” Prescription against Heretics 20.6 The two tests together show what Tertullian takes a succession to be. A list of names answers the question of where a church came from, and the agreement of doctrine answers the question of whether it is the same church. In chapter 32 he applies both to the heresies, and they fail both: they can show no apostle or apostolic man as founder, and their teaching, compared with the apostles', would betray by its own diversity and contrariety that it had no such author.[^tert32c] This is the sense in which succession of office and succession of faith belong together. Tertullian turned to Montanism about 207, according to OrthodoxWiki, and the work used here comes from his years in the Church.[^ow-tert]
One Episcopate: Cyprian
St. Cyprian of Carthage, in the middle of the third century, writes from a different crisis. The persecutions of his day had produced many who lapsed, and he had to say on what authority the Church deals with them. His answer puts the bishop at the center. In a letter to the lapsed, he says that the Lord, in speaking to Peter, was describing the honour of a bishop and the order of the Church:
“Thence, through the changes of times and successions, the ordering of bishops and the plan of the Church flow onwards; so that the Church is founded upon the bishops, and every act of the Church is controlled by these same rulers.” Epistles of Cyprian of Carthage — Epistle 26 1.3
The word “successions” is Cyprian's own, and the line he draws runs from the Lord's commission to the bishop of the present day. To Florentius Pupianus he writes a sentence that states the bishop's place in the Church: “the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop.” Epistles of Cyprian of Carthage — Epistle 68 8.8
His treatise on the unity of the Church, written on the occasion of Novatian's schism, gives the teaching its widest frame, saying that “the episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole.”[^cyp-unity] Each bishop holds his part for the whole, and the unity belongs to all the bishops together. The same treatise says that a man who leaves the unity cannot have “God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
The bishop's standing is not private. In the matter of the Spanish bishops Basilides and Martial, who had lapsed, Cyprian and his colleagues tell the Spanish church to keep “the practice delivered from divine tradition and apostolic observance,” by which a bishop is chosen with the people present and ordained when the neighbouring bishops of the province assemble. Epistles of Cyprian of Carthage — Epistle 67 5.1 The same letter cites the apostle's rule that a bishop must be blameless, which means that a man in the line of ordination can still be removed for what he has done.[^cyp67]
Cyprian's colleague Firmilian of Caesarea, writing to him against the letter of Stephen of Rome in the baptismal controversy, gives a short definition of what the line carries: “the power of remitting sins was given to the apostles, and to the churches which they, sent by Christ, established, and to the bishops who succeeded to them by vicarious ordination.” Epistles of Cyprian of Carthage — Epistle 74 16.3 By “vicarious ordination” he means ordination in the apostles' place. The same letter shows that a claim to a particular succession could be answered, since Firmilian says Stephen “contends that he holds the succession from Peter,” and argues that Stephen betrays the unity of the Church by accepting the baptism of heretics. Epistles of Cyprian of Carthage — Epistle 74 17.1
Laying On of Hands and the Holy Spirit
Ordination is the act that carries the succession, and Scripture ties the laying on of hands to the Spirit. In Samaria, when baptized believers had not yet received the Spirit, Peter and John prayed for them, and “they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8.17). At Ephesus, “When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them” (Acts 19.6). Neither passage describes an appointment to an office; each shows the gesture and the gift of the Spirit together. The gift in Timothy, in 1 Timothy 4.14 and 2 Timothy 1.6 above, joins the same gesture to a ministry, and Pomazansky reads it as ordination.
The early church writings treat ordination as the Spirit's work done through the hands of bishops. The Apostolic Constitutions present themselves as ordinances given by the twelve apostles meeting together, and that claim cannot be taken at face value. The book is pseudonymous, and the Council in Trullo (canon 2) accepts the eighty-five canons handed down in the apostles' name while rejecting the Constitutions, which it says heretics had corrupted: “We therefore reject these Constitutions.” The 102 Canons 2.4 Book VIII is evidence of how its compilers understood ordination, and it is read here on that footing. It describes the ordination of a bishop in detail. He is to be chosen by the people, the people and presbytery are asked whether he is worthy, and then one of the principal bishops, with two others, stands near the altar while the deacons hold “the divine Gospels open upon the head of him that is to be ordained.”[^ac8-4] The prayer that follows asks God to “Pour down, by us, the influence of Your free Spirit,” the Spirit that Christ bestowed on the holy apostles.[^ac8-5] Part of the prayer reads:
“Grant to him, O Lord Almighty, through Your Christ, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, that so he may have power to remit sins according to Your command.”[^ac8-5b]
The same work lays down how many bishops are needed: “Let a bishop be ordained by three or two bishops; but if any one be ordained by one bishop, let him be deprived, both himself and he that ordained him.” It allows an exception when persecution prevents more from coming together, provided he bring the permission of more bishops.[^ac8-27] A presbyter is ordained by one bishop, according to the chapter of canons that closes the book.[^ac8-47]
Canon 4 of Nicaea I gives the same concern the force of law: a bishop is to be appointed by all the bishops of the province, or if that is difficult, by at least three, with the absent bishops giving their consent in writing:
“It is by all means proper that a bishop should be appointed by all the bishops in the province; but should this be difficult, either on account of urgent necessity or because of distance, three at least should meet together, and the suffrages of the absent [bishops] also being given and communicated in writing, then the ordination should take place.” The Canons 4.1
The canon adds that the Metropolitan ratifies what is done. The effect is that no man makes himself a bishop and no single bishop makes another alone: each enters the line by being received into the company of the bishops of his province. Canon 8 applies the same concern to the party that called themselves Cathari, whose ordained clergy may be received so long as there are not two bishops in one city, in the council's words “that there may not be two bishops in the city.” The Canons 8.5 The council is protecting the rule of one bishop for one city.
On the role of the Spirit in ordination, Pomazansky says the blessing comes “through the laying on of hands by a bishop who himself bears by succession the grace of the priesthood,” accompanied by the prayer of the clergy and people present.[^pom-priest2] He adds that Scripture gives “direct and clear indications” that placing a man in the priesthood is the communication of a gift of grace. The Orthodox Church speaks of this act as a mystery (a sacrament), and the entry on Priesthood takes up what the priesthood is and why an ordained priesthood does not compete with the royal priesthood of all the baptized. For the present entry the point is that in these texts the line of hands is joined to prayer: it is a gift handed on by those who have received it.
Office and Faith: What the Line Does Not Guarantee
A line of ordinations does not by itself secure right teaching, and the witnesses above point to this from two sides. Tertullian's second test asks whether a church holds the faith the apostles taught, and Irenaeus puts the rulers of the churches under the faith they received. Augustine answers a related but different question, about a minister's moral unworthiness. Writing to Generosus about the Donatists, he lists the bishops of Rome from Peter to the Anastasius of his own day and remarks that no Donatist bishop appears in the list, which he offers as evidence against them. He then says that even if one of the bishops in that list had been a traitor (a traditor, one who handed over the Scriptures in persecution),
“this fact would do no harm to the Church and to Christians having no share in the guilt of another.” Letters of St. Augustine of Hippo — Letter 53 1.15
His reasoning is that the Lord told his hearers to do what the scribes and Pharisees taught without imitating their works, so that “the stability of the hope of the faithful is secured, inasmuch as being fixed, not in man, but in the Lord.”[^aug53] The line does not make the minister a pure channel, and the minister's unworthiness does not cut off the people. The OCA's statement that the sacraments do not depend on the personal virtue of the minister is a present-day statement of the same point,[^oca3] and the Lutheran Augsburg Confession reaches a matching conclusion in its eighth article, that sacraments administered by evil men remain effective.[^aug8]
OrthodoxWiki reasons from Christ's promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church. According to this interpretation, a succession that stayed formally intact while it completely abandoned the teachings of the Apostles would mean the promise had not been kept, and its example is a world in which all the bishops agreed to abrogate the Nicene Creed. For this reason, it says, Orthodox churches require that a hierarch “maintain Orthodox doctrine as well as full communion with other Orthodox bishops.”[^ow2]
St. Vincent of Lérins gives a test for the faith that does not speak of bishops at all: the Church must “hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all,” a test of universality, antiquity and consent. Commonitory 2.10 A church can be measured by it alongside the question of ordination.
In Augustine's own account of what keeps him in the Church, the succession of bishops is one reason among several, standing beside the agreement of peoples and nations, the Church's age, and the name Catholic: “The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter... down to the present episcopate.” Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus 4.4 He lists it with the others and does not rest the whole case on it. A Christian can ask of any church both questions at once: is it joined to the apostles by ordination, and does it teach what they taught? The entries on Sacred Tradition and Heresy take up the second question further.
How the Form Developed: Two Readings
The New Testament uses “overseer” and “elder” of the same men in several places (Acts 20.17, Acts 20.28, Titus 1.5, Titus 1.7), and in the letters of Ignatius a single bishop stands in each church addressed except Rome's. How the one became the other is an open historical question. Pomazansky and Chrysostom answer it one way, McGuckin another.
Pomazansky holds that the three-fold ministry is apostolic from the start and that the loose New Testament vocabulary conceals it. He argues that “The Apostles themselves chose successors for themselves through ordination. These successors were the bishops,” with the presbyters as their helpers. He takes Timothy and Titus as bishops of Ephesus and Crete, and he notices the overlap of terms in Acts 20, but he says it shows only that “in the first century church terminology was not yet as standardized as it became later,” and that “bishop” was used both for the highest rank and in the ordinary sense of “overseer.”[^pom-hier2]
Chrysostom reads the texts in the same direction. Commenting on Philippians 1.1, he asks, “Were there several Bishops of one city? Certainly not; but he called the Presbyters so.”[^chrys-phil] The titles, in his account, had not yet separated, and he explains that “then they still interchanged the titles.” On “the laying on of the hands of the presbytery” the argument is about who could do the ordaining. He says Paul “speaks not here of Presbyters, but of Bishops. For Presbyters cannot be supposed to have ordained a Bishop.”[^chrys-tim] Here Chrysostom differs from Pomazansky on the same verse, since Pomazansky takes the elders as joining Paul in the ordination. Chrysostom's reasoning shows a fourth-century reader holding the apostolic origin of the single bishop while admitting that the words overlapped.
McGuckin describes the episkopos as the “overseer of the Eucharist,” who in the second and third centuries “begins to emerge” from the congregation of elders who had once presided together. As the number of Christians grew, he says, “it was no longer possible to retain the simpler pattern of one town, one church, one bishop with his presbyters around one altar,” and presbyters were sent out to the outlying churches.[^mcg-dev] On this account the order took shape over the second and third centuries. He sees the pattern fixed “by the clear and widespread rise of the monarchical episcopate by the end of the third century.”[^mcg-dev2]
McGuckin places the order after the apostolic age and presents it as God's provision. He calls bishops, presbyters and deacons a hierarchy “appointed by God to stabilize the church after the age of the apostles has passed.” Of the Ignatian letters he writes that they show principles that recur in the later governance of the Church, among them “that the bishop is the successor of the apostles' authority.”[^mcg-ign2] Behr's observation that Irenaeus still used “bishops” and “presbyters” interchangeably shows the vocabulary still fluid in Irenaeus's day,[^behr2b] as does the greeting of Polycarp's letter, which names presbyters and no bishop.[^pol2]
The two readings differ over whether the single bishop was already present in the apostles' own arrangements (Pomazansky, Chrysostom) or took shape in the generations after them (McGuckin). Both treat the vocabulary of the first century as fluid, and both hold the ministry to be God's provision for the Church. Pomazansky says the hierarchy “was established by the Lord Jesus Christ,” while McGuckin takes the Ignatian letters to show the episcopal system settling into place from the end of the first century.[^pom-mcg] The texts do not fix the date or the mechanism of the change, and an entry that claimed to would claim more than they give.
Beside the Roman Claim and the Reformation
The Council of Florence, in its decree for the Greeks, defines “that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of blessed Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and the true vicar of Christ,” and head of the whole Church.[^florence] The Council of Trent teaches that at the Last Supper Christ made the apostles priests of the New Testament and commanded “them and their successors in the priesthood” to offer the sacrifice,[^trent22] and its seventh session lists Order among the seven sacraments and anathematizes anyone who denies that Order imprints a character that cannot be repeated.[^trent7] Trent's text on bishops as the successors of the apostles belongs to its twenty-third session, which is not quoted here.
Cyprian's treatise on unity begins its account of the Church with Peter: the Lord gives him the keys and bids him feed the sheep, and after the resurrection gives all the apostles an equal power. The treatise then says:
“Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power; but the beginning proceeds from unity.”[^cyp-unity4]
At the council of Carthage that the source dates to 257 (modern dating puts it in September 256), Cyprian opened by saying that no bishop sets himself over the others: “no one [of us ] has set himself up [to be] bishop [of bishops].” Acts of the Council 1.5 The bishops, he added, await the judgment of Christ alone, the universal Lord.[^carth257] Firmilian, as seen above, answered Stephen's claim to Peter's succession by appealing to the unity of the Church. Tertullian says that Rome makes Clement to have been ordained by Peter, and Augustine reckons the line of Roman bishops from Peter and offers it, in the passage quoted above, as a test against the Donatists.
The Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530 says in its seventh article that “to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments,” and in its fourteenth that “no one should publicly teach in the Church or administer the Sacraments unless he be regularly called.”[^aug7] It does not reject bishops. Its twenty-eighth article defines them as those “to whom has been committed the ministry of the Word and the Sacraments,” and says that by divine right they have “no jurisdiction except to forgive sins, to judge doctrine, to reject doctrines contrary to the Gospel, and to exclude from the communion of the Church wicked men, whose wickedness is known.”[^aug28] Within those limits the article says the congregations must obey them, and it also says that when bishops teach or ordain anything against the Gospel, the congregations have a commandment of God prohibiting obedience. It denies bishops the power of the sword as bishops.
OrthodoxWiki states the Orthodox requirement as ordination, doctrine and communion together, and from it concludes that the Orthodox “do not recognize the existence of apostolic succession outside the Orthodox Church.”[^ow3] Pomazansky says that a communion without the episcopal succession lacks “an attribute of the true Church, even if in it there is present an undistorted dogmatic teaching.”[^pom-hier3] What the Reformers' own reasons were belongs to the entries on The Reformation and Schism.
What It Means for a Life
A parish celebrates the Divine Liturgy under a priest who serves with the blessing of his bishop, and the OCA describes the cloth on the altar, the antimension signed by the bishop, as the bishop's permission “to the community to gather and to act as the Church of God.”[^oca-antim] In the pew, this means a congregation with a place in a company that reaches back, by the Church's claim, to the apostles, and a bishop who answers for what is taught and done there.
Tertullian drew a consequence from the same fact in the twenty-first chapter of the Prescription: what the apostles preached is to be learned from the churches they founded, so a teaching that none of those churches holds cannot be traced to them.[^tert21] The doctrine stands with Sacred Tradition and The Church as one of the ways the Orthodox hold that Christ is present to his people across time. The entries on Bishop and Presbyter take up the two offices, and the fathers of Nicaea I took care over how a bishop is appointed. The first apostolic acts are recorded in the Book of Acts, and the witnesses who built on them include St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp of Smyrna and St. Irenaeus, with Tertullian and Cyprian answering the heretic and the schismatic who divide the body these men guarded.
Sources
[^behr-primer]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006), ch. 2. [^clem44]: Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 44 (Ante-Nicene Fathers translation; cf. J. B. Lightfoot's translation). [^heg22]: Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 4.22 (Hegesippus); Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3, as quoted in Robert Arakaki, "Excerpts from Irenaeus of Lyons," OrthodoxBridge; Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 32. [^tert32]: Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 20, 32. [^pom-three]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "Priesthood." [^ow]: OrthodoxWiki, "Apostolic succession." [^oca]: Orthodox Church in America, "Holy Orders." [^oca2]: Orthodox Church in America, "Holy Orders." [^pom-hier]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "The Church hierarchy." [^chrys-acts3]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles 3. [^pom-priest]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "Priesthood." [^mcg-bishop]: John A. McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), ch. 1. [^pom-priest-tim]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "Priesthood." [^eus3-15]: Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 3.15–16. [^clem42]: Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 42. [^clem44-lf]: Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 44, in J. B. Lightfoot's translation. [^clem44b]: Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 44. [^mcg-ign]: John A. McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), ch. 1. [^ign-names]: Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians 1; Epistle to the Magnesians 2; Epistle to the Trallians 1; Epistle to Polycarp, salutation; Epistle to the Philadelphians 1. [^ign-rom]: Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Romans 2, 9. [^ign-smyr8]: Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 8. [^ign-mag13]: Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Magnesians 13. [^ign-phil1]: Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians 1. [^pol]: Polycarp, Epistle to the Philippians, salutation and 5–6; Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to Polycarp, salutation. [^eus3-36]: Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 3.36.1–2. [^iren-flor]: Irenaeus, Fragments from the Lost Writings, fragment 2 (to Florinus). [^eus3]: Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 3.2, 3.11, 3.13–15, 3.22. [^eus3-4]: Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 3.4. [^heg22b]: Hegesippus, Memoirs, in Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 4.22. [^heg22c]: Hegesippus, Memoirs, in Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 4.22. [^behr-secret]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death, ch. 2. [^iren3]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.1, as quoted in Robert Arakaki, "Excerpts from Irenaeus of Lyons," OrthodoxBridge. [^iren3b]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4, as quoted in Robert Arakaki, "Response to Robin Phillips, 'Questions About St. Irenaeus and Apostolic Succession,'" OrthodoxBridge. [^behr1]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death, ch. 2. [^behr1b]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death, ch. 2. [^behr2]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death, ch. 2. [^iren-frag3]: Irenaeus, Fragments from the Lost Writings, fragment 3. [^tert32b]: Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 32. [^tert32c]: Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 32. [^ow-tert]: OrthodoxWiki, "Tertullian." [^cyp-unity]: Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Church 5–6. [^cyp67]: Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 67. [^ac8-4]: Apostolic Constitutions 8.4. [^ac8-5]: Apostolic Constitutions 8.5. [^ac8-5b]: Apostolic Constitutions 8.5. [^ac8-27]: Apostolic Constitutions 8.27. [^ac8-47]: Apostolic Constitutions 8.47. [^pom-priest2]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "Priesthood." [^aug53]: Augustine of Hippo, Letter 53.2–3. [^oca3]: Orthodox Church in America, "Holy Orders." [^aug8]: Augsburg Confession (1530), Art. VIII. [^ow2]: OrthodoxWiki, "Apostolic succession." [^pom-hier2]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "The Church hierarchy." [^chrys-phil]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on Philippians 1. [^chrys-tim]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Timothy 13. [^mcg-dev]: John A. McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History, ch. 1. [^mcg-dev2]: John A. McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History, ch. 1. [^mcg-ign2]: John A. McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History, ch. 1. [^behr2b]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death, ch. 2. [^pol2]: Polycarp, Epistle to the Philippians, salutation. [^pom-mcg]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "The Church hierarchy"; John A. McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History, ch. 1. [^florence]: Council of Florence, decree for the Greeks (Laetentur caeli, 1439), Denzinger 694. [^trent22]: Council of Trent, Session XXII (1562), ch. 1 and canon 2. [^trent7]: Council of Trent, Session VII (1547), canons 1 and 9. [^cyp-unity4]: Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Church 4. [^carth257]: Council of Carthage, Acts of the Council, Cyprian's opening address. [^aug7]: Augsburg Confession (1530), Arts. VII and XIV. [^aug28]: Augsburg Confession (1530), Art. XXVIII. [^ow3]: OrthodoxWiki, "Apostolic succession." [^pom-hier3]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, "The Church hierarchy." [^oca-antim]: Orthodox Church in America, "Holy Orders." [^tert21]: Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 21.