19 Facts About Apostolic succession

Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is held to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops.

That this Apostolic succession depended on the fact of ordination to a vacant see and the status of those who administered the ordination is seldom commented on.

Apostolic succession warns that this is open to the grave objection that it makes grace a material commodity and represents an almost mechanical method of imparting what is by definition a free gift.

Apostolic succession adds that the idea cannot be squeezed out of Irenaeus' words.

Apostolic succession argues that in Clement of Rome ministerial activity is liturgical: the undifferentiated 'presbyter-bishops' are to "make offerings to the Lord at the right time and in the right places" something which is simply not defined by the evangelists.

Related searches

Apostolic succession mentions the change in the use of sacrificial language as a more significant still: for Paul the Eucharist is a receiving of gifts from God, the Christian sacrifice is the offering of one's body.

The most meaningful apostolic succession for them, then, is a "faithful succession" of apostolic teaching.

Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church asserts that apostolic succession means something more than just a transmission of authorities; it witnesses to the apostolic faith from the same apostolic faith, and in communion with other churches.

Anglican Communion and those Lutheran churches which claim apostolic succession do not specifically teach this but exclusively practice episcopal ordination.

An early understanding of apostolic succession is represented by the traditional beliefs of various churches, as organised around important episcopal sees, to have been founded by specific apostles.

Teachings on the nature of Apostolic Succession vary depending on the ecclesiastic body, especially within various Protestant denominations.

In Catholic theology, the doctrine of apostolic succession is that the apostolic tradition – including apostolic teaching, preaching, and authority – is handed down from the college of apostles to the college of bishops through the laying on of hands, as a permanent office in the Church.

Dufort argued that by 1969 all Anglican bishops had acquired apostolic succession fully recognized by Rome, since from the 1930s Old Catholic bishops have acted as co-consecrators in the ordination of Anglican bishops.

Apostolic succession is viewed not so much as conveyed mechanically through an unbroken chain of the laying-on of hands, but as expressing continuity with the unbroken chain of commitment, beliefs and mission starting with the first apostles; and as hence emphasising the enduring yet evolving nature of the Church.

Apostolic succession goes on to explain that they ascribed to early Anglican authors a far more exclusive version of the doctrine than was the case, they blurred the distinction between succession in office and succession in consecration ; they spoke of apostolic succession as the channel of grace in a way that failed to do justice to His gracious activity within all the dispensations of the New Covenant.

At least one of the Scandinavian Lutheran churches in the Porvoo Communion of churches, the Church of Denmark has bishops, but strictly speaking they were not in the historic apostolic succession prior to their entry into the Porvoo Communion, since their episcopate and holy orders derived from Johannes Bugenhagen, who was a pastor, not a bishop.

In recent years a number of Lutheran churches of the Evangelical Catholic and High Church Lutheran churchmanship in the United States of America have accepted the doctrine of apostolic succession and have successfully recovered it, generally from Independent Catholic churches.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest denomination in the Latter-day Saint movement, Apostolic Succession involves the leadership of the church being established through the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Some Protestants feel that such claims of apostolic succession are proven false by the differences in traditions and doctrines between these churches: Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox consider both the Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox churches to be heretical, having been anathematized in the early ecumenical councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon respectively.