Which came first, the “apostolic succession” or the New Testament?

The second of Michael Kruger’s three “criteria for canonicity” is “Apostolic origins” of the New Testament canon. With his use of the term “Apostolic Origins” as a criterion for canon, Dr Kruger recognizes that the Apostles played a unique role not only in the development of the canon but in the foundation of the church.

The message of redemption in Jesus Christ was entrusted to the apostles of Christ, to whom he gave his full authority and power: “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16, pg 109).

                                                                                            

Roman Catholics are accustomed to hearing this verse in conjunction with the notion of “apostolic succession”, the notion that the Apostles somehow passed on this authority to “the Church”, and that this “succession” of apostolic “authority” was “handed on” in full measure not only from Christ to the Apostles (which it was), but from the Apostles to the church that came after them.

And while the concept of “apostolic succession” really has nothing to do with the growth and acceptance of the New Testament canon, it’s important to place this into the context of the overall discussion about the New Testament canon.

The question often is asked, (as Trosclair places it in this comment):

the same men who saw the need to ‘fix’ the Biblical canon also saw the need to ‘fix’ the lists of those who were successors to the Apostles. As a matter of fact, the Apostolic sees were more important for Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, etc. for the purpose of combating the Gnostic sects than was the Biblical canon. This contradicts Cullmann’s thesis. The Church fathers make it clear that the Scriptures could be twisted but the Apostolic sees had the sure ‘charism of truth’ which would preserve orthodoxy.

The short answer is that the “canonical core” of Apostolic writings was in place long before Irenaeus (c. 180), Tertullian (c. 200), and Cyprian (c. 250) ever commented about “lists”. Prior to the time these men wrote, both the Old Testament and the “canonical core” (of the collected works of Paul and the four gospels) of the New Testament were actually were the source of orthodoxy and the precursor of the “rule of faith” (see Canon Revisited, pgs 133-141). I’ll discuss the specifics of this as I move forward through the book.

Suffice it to say that Cullmann’s thesis (“Scripture and Tradition,” reprinted in “The Early Church,” London: SCM Press LTD © 1956, reprinted ©2011) does account for this fact, in a way that Trosclair may not have seen in the short selections I’ve posted from Cullmann’s writings. The writings of the New Testament came first, (in the form of the “canonical core”, to be sure), and the “Apostolic sees” came later. Someone may protest that “the canonical core” wasn’t quite complete, but it was authoritative nonetheless.

Here is how Cullmann described the apparent unreliability of “oral tradition” in maintaining “the apostolic witness”, which was regarded to be unique and unrepeatable, in comparison with later “ecclesiastical” traditions, which were certainly not binding on the universal church (especially not the church of the Reformation or the church in our time):

For a long time it has been noted that, apart from the letters of Ignatius, the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers, who do not really belong to the Apostolic age but to the beginning of the second century—[1 Clement, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas]—despite their theological interest, are at  a considerable distance from New Testament thought, and to a considerable extent relapse into a moralism which ignores the notion of grace, and of the redemptive death of Christ, so central to apostolic theology. [See Torrance’s “The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers,” 1948].

It has also been noted that the Church Fathers who wrote after 150—Irenaeus and Tertullian—although chronologically more remote from the New Testament than the authors of the first half of the century, understood infinitely better the essence of the gospel. This seems paradoxical, but is explained perfectly by that most important act, the codification of the apostolic tradition in a canon [a “canonical core”], henceforward the superior norm of all tradition.

The Fathers of the first half of the century wrote at a period when the writings of the New Testament already existed, but without being vested with canonical authority, and so set apart. Therefore they did not have any norm at their disposal, and, on the other hand, and on the other hand, they were already too far distant from the apostolic age to be able to draw directly on the testimony of eye-witnesses. The encounters of Polycarp and Papias with apostolic persons could no longer guarantee a pure transmission of authentic traditions, as is proved by the extant fragments of their writings.

But after 150 contact with the apostolic age was re-established through the construction of the canon, which discarded all impure and deformed sources of information. Thus it is confirmed that, by subordinating all subsequent tradition to the canon, the Church once and for all saved its apostolic basis. It enabled its members to hear, thanks to this [“canonical core”], continually afresh and throughout all the centuries to come the authentic word of the apostles, a privilege which no oral tradition, passing through Polycarp or Papias, could have assured them (96).

The writings of Irenaeus (c. 180), Tertullian (c. 200), and Cyprian (c. 250), came much later than this “canonical core” of Paul’s writings and the Gospels. Cullmann goes on to note that, of course “scripture needs to be interpreted” and “the church ought to feel responsible for this interpretation” (97).

However, if the notion of “apostolic sees” was helpful in combating the Gnostic heresies of the day, it must be recognized that this was a still-later development (late second century), and the church at large ought in no way to be bound by what really was an “interpretive hermeneutic” of the second century.  It was by no means a “structural component” of “the Church that Christ founded”. An apologetic tactic that worked in the context of Gnostic heresies by no means subjects the later church to that hermeneutic and tactic.

And comments by late second and third-century writers ought by no means to provide the basis for a governmental structure that clearly became not merely open to abuse, but which itself became a form of abuse, and desperately needed to be changed.

This is precisely where the heart of the conflict between Rome and the Reformation lies. Once the notion of “apostolic succession” is put into perspective as a mechanism for addressing heresies (and not a mechanism by which the “authority” of the apostles was “handed down” to later popes and bishops), it clears the way for us to understand that the Reformers rightly cast off Roman authority when they did.

The Reformation holds that the role and “office” of Apostle was unique and unrepeatable. Rome holds, too, to some form of lip service that the “office” was unrepeatable, but somehow, the authority made its way to “bishops” (and from Peter to “the successor of Peter”), as somehow “structural” to the church – an “ontological reality” of the church. “Bishops must be in charge”, and not only are they “in charge”, but they somehow have interpretive mastery over the texts of Scripture.

Cullmann goes on to say that, in its acceptance of core canonical works of the New Testament as normative (based on the apostolic testimony therein), it is tacitly making the agreement that it “does not impose on future generations to take as a starting-point and as a norm of their interpretation of the same text the decision that it feels bound to take, but it remains conscious of the superiority of the scripture as the immediate testimony of the divine revelation to the interpretation which it feels compelled to give, and which can only be a derivative testimony…” (97).

So, the concept of “apostolic succession” within the “apostolic sees” did not, for the church of this period, constitute a “structural element” of the church, in the same way that the “apostolic testimony” (or “apostolic tradition”) was normative and foundational for the church.