According to* Ortlund, the term Apostolic succession as understood by Catholics and Orthodox says:
- without a successive laying on of hands, going back to the apostles, a man cannot celebrate the sacraments (except baptism) or hold authoritative office in the Church;
- only bishops to the exclusion of priests who are not bishops can ordain and this distinction of bishops and priests from each other goes back to the Apostles;
- only bishops are successors of the Apostles.
Now, Ortlund argues from St. Clement of Rome and from St. Jerome that two and three are false. Therefore, he considers, the whole thing is contrary to tradition and therefore it is false.
Let me first argue where I think he gets the concept wrong, giving the correct definitions.
- Without a successive laying on of hands, going back to the Twelve Apostles, a man cannot celebrate the sacraments (except baptism and marriage) or hold authoritative office in the Church, the latter however so that a man can take up an office as bishop if elected even if not yet ordained, as long as he intends to get consecrated later on;
- probably only bishops to the exclusion of priests who are not bishops can ordain and this or at least some distinction of bishops and priests from each other goes back to the Apostles;
- only bishops are successors of the Twelve Apostles. Simple priests are successors of the Seventy-Two Apostles.
In other words, Jesus ordained (Holy Thursday) and consecrated (evening of Resurrection Sunday, except Thomas Didymus) the Twelve, and the Twelve then ordained (but did not necessarily consecrate) the Seventy-Two.
Now, I'll admit that in the New Testament it is difficult to find Bishops distinguished from Priests in that precise terminology. I would argue that the word Bishop in the NT usually means Priest. There are several different terms for Bishop and Bishop isn't one of them. Someone has argued that St. John the Gospeller being called Presbyter argues this was originally one of the words for Bishop, but if Father Jean Colson is correct he was not the son of Zebedee, then he may have been called Presbyter rather than Episcopus because he was not a bishop.
The NT words for Bishops, not all of which imply everyone so designated is a Bishop, are:
- Apostle (but between Andronicus and his wife Junia, she was not a Bishop, though both are "of note among the apostles"), Twelve, Seventy-Two (most of which would have been elevated to Bishops), others (Sts. Paul and Barnabas)
- Evangelist
- Prophet (but some prophets and especially prophetesses were not Bishops)
- Angel (Apocalypse 2 and 3)
- "thou" (St. Paul in adressing Sts. Titus and Timothy)
What do we make of Sts. Clement and Jerome?
St. Clement supported the two-fold authority of Bishop and Deacon with a Scripture which doesn't seem to exist. That's what Gavin Ortlund claims. This refers to First Clement chapter 42:
The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus says the Scripture in a certain place, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.
I had a hard time to localise the Scripture in question. The direct quote gave searches to First Clement. It's not in a standard version of the Bible. Here is the first hit that seemed to localise the quote:
The Willard Preacher : The Authority of the Church
http://thewillardpreacher.com/for-orthodox-and-inquirers/the-church-fathers-speak/the-authority-of-the-church/
It says:
For thus saith the Scripture in a certain place, “I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.” (Is. 60:17, LXX)
Now, what do I find in the LXX version of Ellopos?
ISAIAH / ΗΣΑΪΑΣ 60
https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/septuagint/chapter.asp?book=43&page=60
And for brass I will bring thee gold, and for iron I will bring thee silver, and instead of wood I will bring thee brass, and instead of stones, iron; and I will make thy princes peaceable, and thine overseers righteous.
καὶ ἀντὶ χαλκοῦ οἴσω σοι χρυσίον, ἀντὶ δὲ σιδήρου οἴσω σοι ἀργύριον, ἀντὶ δὲ ξύλων οἴσω σοι χαλκόν, ἀντὶ δὲ λίθων σίδηρον. καὶ δώσω τοὺς ἄρχοντάς σου ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ τοὺς ἐπισκόπους σου ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ.
It would seem the papacy was temporarily in an error about how many degrees the office has, probably because "dikaiosyne" could give rise to a scribal error with "diakonos" ... and this was the text the Pope had. Or he could have misquoted from memory. He certainly didn't possess a Gideon Bible with lots of bookmarks where he could turn the pages until he knew what he was consulting. That's not how they did back then.
I think someone very quickly gave him a better text, discretely so as not to detract from his authority (a kind of respect I do not owe Gavin Ortlund), and no future Pope repeated it. Or, as said, no body cared that he had made a slight misquote. It could be a conflation of two quotes, like we find in the NT.
But so far this makes it look that Gavin Ortlund understands St. Clement correctly as to this passage. Not necessarily. You see, the word "priest" or "presbyter" is mentioned both before and after this. And it would be strange if a Church Father considered an OT prophecy as a direct blueprint for Church structure. Different aspects about Christ, about Mary and notably also about the Church are spread all over the Old Testament. And the context where St. Clement mentions these two offices, not only does he not specify that they are the two only offices, but he even gives a clue why this would not be so:
they appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe
It is very likely that the Apostles could very well have known about three offices and even so have ordained only two. You see, a Bishop need not be an Apostle to ordain a priest. Once you have set up Bishops and Deacons, the Bishops can go on to chose the future Priests from among the Deacons. For that matter, a Bishop and a Deacon would be the Liturgic Minima of the Church. In some cases, in some Churches, one could have temporarily dispensed with having priests who weren't also Bishops, just so as to be on the safe side in case the Monarchic bishop should be the one martyred and surrounding ones unable to come, and in some Churches, even Rome, one could have forgot that this was the case, considered a two-fold office as the normal thing and have lived through a restoration locally as if it were a novum, though not a resisted one. This kind of Church could be where the informants of St. Jerome came from.
But, suppose again Gavin Ortlund pretends this is guess work and prefers his own guess work (or that of the seminary he was to) and insists that Priests and Bishops were the same thing for St. Clement of Rome, he swears till his face is blue that this is what the good and adequate art of text analysis (without historic context) exacts for First Clement, even if that is unjust to the rambling and unsystematic approach of ancient styles, very unacademic by modern standards, so what?
It still doesn't dispense with point one:
Without a successive laying on of hands, going back to the Twelve Apostles, a man cannot celebrate the sacraments (except baptism and marriage) or hold authoritative office in the Church, the latter however so that a man can take up an office as bishop if elected even if not yet ordained, as long as he intends to get consecrated later on.
In fact, Albigensians were claiming Apostolic Succession for the Consolamentum of the Perfecti. This was probably entirely fraudulent, and at least cannot be historically traced. I think Waldensians may be making a similar claim. The idea of making Apostolic Succession dispensable came with the Reformation.
Neither making Presbyters successors of the Twelve (probably taken from sources saying they are successors of "the Apostles" in the sense of the Seventy-Two), nor pretending all of the Apostolic era saw Presbyters and Bishops as the same thing (essentially more like Bishops, since able to ordain), would dispense with it. It would either mean people who had been ordained with no power to ordain and consecrate weren't receiving the power to forgive sins or celebrate the Eucharist either, or it would, more probably, mean that normal Catholic priests ignore a power of ordination that actually resides in them. In fact, some Catholics have theorised that a Presbyter can ordain and consecrate, if he has the dispensation of the Pope, but otherwise his powers in this respect are hampered, and "Pius XIII" (who got no successor after he died) actually tried to access this way to the episcopal office, namely by "papally" giving dispensation to the one other priest involved there. I reckon him as not the back then real Pope, because he has no successor and he tried to rival an already extant Michael I. But even so, people on a "desert" island could not access the Eucharist prior to praying for rescue or for a priest to share their isolation.
In fact, decisively for me, we do not just have Apostolic Succession from the Apostles, but also Apostolic Tradition. This doesn't mean digging up the earliest possible post-NT author and pitting him against everyone after him, it means that the collective of successors of the Apostles are not capable of
all erring on an important matter. In the absence of a parallel tradition featuring the idea that Luther simply for being a priest could also ordain, the idea of Presbyterian Protestantism (which is also part of the theory, though not the obvious show, of Episcopal Protestantism, Lutherans, Anglicans, Moravians and Methodists) is a novum. And as such an error. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Copts, Armenians, Assyrians, perhaps there is also a Syriac anto-Nestorian but non-Chalcedonian communion,
all distinguish bishops from priests. So, whichever of these be the true Church, this needs to be the rule of the Church.
His real beef with Catholicism is probably the Inquisition, and especially the death of Tyndale, which I have commented on on another post.** Or the exclusivism of Catholicism.
"Why can't I be saved, if I disagree? Why can't we be Church, if we disagree? Is God that stingy?" For the latter it's simply a question of God keeping His Church visible. This post is about an item where Eastern Orthodox and so on are NOT wrong, and where "witness of the (older) heretics" is valuable.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Dionysius the Areopagite
9.X.2024
* I would say "passim" but if I missed him making contrary statements, please tell me. Latest item I looked at may have been this one:
Is Apostolic Succession an Accretion?
Truth Unites | 19 Sept. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TItkYgnWec
** It contains a link to his video, it's this one:
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Tyndale
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2024/10/tyndale.html
