I recently listened to a podcast from Bob Dewaay’s Critical Issues Commentary, The Roots and Fruits of the New Apostolic Reformation, Part 1. (You can locate a print copy here, and the mp3 here.) Whilst discussing the early church’s view on the office of apostle, Dewaay made a keen observation I had not previously considered:
If the apostles (this would include the vast majority of New Testament authors) intended to perpetuate the office and envisioned others taking their places, why are there no explicit instructions on how this would come to be (or that it would come to be at all), and why no qualifications?
When Paul established a church, he placed elders over it. And Paul gives us a substantial list of qualifications these men must conform to in I Timothy 3 and Titus. Clearly, Paul intends the local church to be governed by elders. If Paul or the other apostles intended for these local churches to also remain under the authority of a continuing apostolic office, why no qualifications?
And why do we never see this happen in the New Testament? Paul’s protégé, Timothy, is established as an elder or pastor, not an apostle. If such a significant role was to be continued and passed on, why does scripture leave us no clue as to how this should take place?
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To be fair, Scripture does seem to provide one qualification for an apostle:
So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.
Acts 1:21-22
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord?
1 Corinthians 9:1
So, apostles are to have physically served with or seen the Lord. Unless one is willing to say he has physically seen the Lord, one cannot hold the office of apostle. Therefore, if one is going to accept the Five-Fold Ministry (or the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), one would have to accept that Christ continues to physically appear and teach. (Unfortunately, some do continue to claim to have had such encounters. Oddly, the more goofy and heretical an individual’s teaching gets, the more likely such an individual seems to be ready to claim a physical Christ-encounter.)
Yet, even if one accepts the above, it still remains perplexing that Scripture leaves us no guidelines for the continuation of this office. If the office is to continue, we are put in the position of accepting an individual’s unverifiable claim that the risen Christ has physically appeared to him and anointed him an apostle. I find it hard to believe Christ intended to leave such an influential role open to this kind of ambiguity.
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