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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The Papacy is the office of Bishop, not the office of Apostle. It’s origins are apostolic, that is handed down from the apostles, but not an office of Apostle.
Have a blessed Easter celebration.
Tim
I get troubled by the churches or ministers that call themselves Apostles. There is a local church here that focuses on that & has practices that are very close to being cult-like.
Wouldn’t Paul be an the exception to the principle in Acts 1:21-22? Of course it can be argued that his encounter on the Damascus road would qualify Paul. However, even if that is excluded Paul is the only exception for Apostolic succession recorded in the Bible.
Tim,
You are correct. I added that parentheses last minute and obviously didn’t think it all the way through. The Bishop of Rome, right? Thanks for the correction!
The Roman Catholic position on Apostles & Prophets is essentially the same as the majority Protestant position, isn’t it? (The “prophets” referred to in Ephesians 4 refer to OT prophets and the “apostles” refer to the original 12 only.)
God Bless & Happy Easter
“The Roman Catholic position on Apostles & Prophets is essentially the same as the majority Protestant position, isn’t it? (The “prophets” referred to in Ephesians 4 refer to OT prophets and the “apostles” refer to the original 12 only.)”
Yes it is…though counting Paul, it ends up the original 12, plus one. :)
Thanks.
Right, again! :)
DeeDee,
For some reason, some of my comment updates are not being emailed to me. I didn’t see yours until just now.
My experience with these kinds of churches has been similar.
Have a Blessed Easter!
Mankind has from the beginning wanted to be like God. That was the twisted lie satan gave in the Garden and it is the continual lie to present day and until the return of Jesus.
The bible does not support the position. Period! for today. These men who want to be considered Apostles have twisted the scriptures and are power hungry, money hungry and what to be elevated to a place of having authority so as to THINK they have some kind of ability that is not scripturally based. Poor interpretation of those scriptures.This is a topic that has been beat to death on other sites as well and there will never be a conclusion on it because the camps all have their interpretation of Ephesians 4 but never take into consideration Acts 1 qualifications.
See, even I interpet the scriptures one way and will not be convinced of the interpretation that I have. That is, NO APOSTLE IN THE SAME CATAGORY AS THE ORIGINAL 12!!!
Jim,
No problem. Someone else mentioned having problems with comments, too.
TJ,
What about Paul?
DH
Paul is an Apostle also.
Interesting concept, there are some camps out there that believe Paul was a Gnostic and really wasn’t a true Apostle.
I don’t follow this thinking but should have included him as well.
Biblically, an apostle (GK: Gk. Apostolos) may be defined as an envoy, ambassador, or messenger commissioned to carry out the instructions of the commissioning agent. Jesus had a large number of disciples during his ministry, but not all of them were apostles. The Twelve were chosen out of a wider group both to be with Jesus as disciples and to be sent out to preach and teach as apostles.
There are four lists of the Twelve in the New Testament, one in each of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matt 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16) and one in Acts (1:13). These lists are roughly the same, representing four variant forms of a single early oral tradition. The NT yields six essential features of an apostle — some of which appear as qualifications, and some of which appear also as privileges.
An apostle of Messiah (Christ) must be of Messiah’s nation, i.e., a Jew. Messiah’s mission was first to the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matt. 10:6). In their first mission they were ordered neither to go nor to preach to any others than Jews. Their Lord amply illustrated this limitation from the very first of His public ministry to its very end. Also these men were to become organs for delivery of divine oracles. According to the law of Deuteronomy 18:9, confirmed by Paul (Rom. 3:1-2; cf. Matt. 10:1-5), the oracles of God are given to the Jews. Divine messengers to Hebrew people will in every case be Hebrew people. This has at least some bearing (if not a decisive bearing) on the question of apostolic succession and the possibility of apostles in the church today.
An apostle must have received a call and commission to his office directly from Christ. The nature of the office — minister plenipotentiary — required it; the precedent set by the Master (Luke 6:13) demonstrated it; and the case of Paul, as he elaborately argues in 2 Corinthians and the first part of Galatians (esp. Gal. 1:1), confirms it. The choice of Matthias by the lot (Acts 1:24-26) conforms to it (see Prov. 16:33) and, though somewhat irregular, is no exception.
An apostle must have the Lord Jesus, being an eyewitness of His doings and an ear-witness of His sayings. If they were to be founding witnesses (i.e., founders of the church), this was essential. This is why early in His ministry, Jesus invited twelve men (among others) to follow Him and some months later commissioned the Twelve as apostles, insisting on their being constantly with Him (John 15:27; cf. Luke 22:28). The requirement is spelled out in the case of Matthias (Acts 1:21-22). By personal observation of the events of redemption they were able to testify to them, and as Jesus said, one of the purposes of their later special enduement with power from the Holy Spirit was to enable them to remember infallibly what they had heard Jesus say (John 14:28; 15:26-27; 16:13-15). Paul was at special pains to let it be known that he met this requirement as an apostle (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8; Acts 22:6-21).
An apostle must possess authority in communicating divine revelation, and what he wrote under divine inspiration was indeed ‘the voice of God.’ A reading of Deuteronomy 18:9 shows how this gift is related to Old Testament Scripture. New Testament passages which declare this are 1 Corinthians 2:10 and Galatians 1:11-12. Apostles were thus enabled to give in the New Testament Scriptures the true sense of the Old Testament (Luke 24:27; Acts 26:22-23; 28:23) veiled from the Jewish nation then as now (Rom. 11:25; 2 Cor. 3:11-18; 1 Thess. 2:14-16), and to set forth the revelation of the New Testament as an inerrant standard for the new dispensation (1 Pet. 1:25; 1 John 4:6; John 14:26; 1 Thess. 2:13). Accordingly, later generations of believers — and believers to the present hour — have regarded apostolicity of some degree as an undoubted, essential quality of New Testament Scripture.
An apostle is required to furnish ‘the signs of an apostle.’ These consist of power at some critical juncture to perform undoubted miracles (cf. Acts 4:16). Deuteronomy 18:9 and 13:1 furnish the Old Testament background. The Gospels consistently show that Jesus’ human nature was enabled to be the palpable vehicle of such miracles by the special bestowal of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:16-4:25 and parallels) and the same was to be true of the apostles after their post-Resurrection recommissioning by Christ (Acts 1:8; cf, Mark 16:14, 19-20). The apostles performed such acts (Acts 2:43; 5:12). Furthermore, there is reason to believe that only they and they to whom they conveyed such powers performed miraculous acts in the early church (1 Cor. 12:8-11, 28), and that when the Word had been thus confirmed the miracles ceased (Heb, 2:1-4). As in the Old Testament epoch God furnished signs for His accredited messengers, so He furnished ’signs of an apostle’ (2 Cor. 12:12; cf. Pss. 74:9; 105:27-28). These signs were God’s means of ‘bearing witness with them’ (Heb. 2:4).
The several Gospel reports of how Jesus rebuked the demands for miracles — demands made by shallow-thinking crowds of thrillseekers or of debauched kings — cannot do away with the evidential and certifying function of New Testament miracles. Neither do the remarks of Paul near the end of 2 Corinthians regarding the perverse reasonings of the Christian citizens of Corinth regarding his ministry do away with this function of miracles. The miracles were not for edification of the believers primarily, and neither Jesus nor Paul says so. The believers of today do not need them for edification and should not ask for miracles for such reasons. Faith has another method.
An apostle must possess plenary authority among all the churches. In this he differed from the holders of other New Testament ecclesiastical office, for in the New Testament, bishops (or elders) and deacons wielded only local-church authority and had only local function. But Peter could judge an Ananias or Sapphira by personal authority (Acts 5:1-11), not church authority. Paul asserted a personal responsibility for ‘all the churches’ (2 Cor. 11:28), and in distant Philippi, Paul could judge concerning a matter of moral discipline in a congregation at Corinth (1 Cor. 5:3). Apostles could and did write most of the epistles of the New Testament canon, giving commands to churches far away, claiming inerrant divine authority for themselves and even for one another (1 Cor. 14:37; cf. 2 Pet. 3:16). They had power to furnish faith and order as a model for all future generations, and to exercise discipline over all disorderly Christians (2 Cor. 10:8; 13:10). Clearly the self-appointed apostles of our day fail to meet these criteria and are, therefore, false apostles.
Thanks, Tim H!
Did you paste this from somewhere else?
Interestingly, all of the above qualifications for an apostle must be extrapolated from who/what the 12 (plus Paul) actually were - there are no explicit or directive qualifications for the continuation of such an important office.
God Bless
Yes, I did get it from someplace else.
I have a very good friend/pastor who I pass things onto once in awhile and he comments on them. He doesn’t want to get involved in blogging but he has told me to go ahead and plagerize anytime I want.
This came from another lengthy article from a post that I sent him from another site. It was so good that I copied and pasted a portion here as the topic was appropriate.
It was well done. He has also done an excellent paper on the prosperity gospel. It’s about 33 pages long but really good and scripturally backed as to the error of the teachings.
He has been am emmense help to me along with all of those I have had personal contact with from these sites. It’s good to have a local man who has such a good understanding of the word. If he ever had a church of his own, I’d be there in a flash.
JimB,
Interesting thoughts about 21st c apostles. I share some of your skepticism, though for different reasons. For myself, I’m not quite prepared to take the necessity of having seen Jesus as being exclusionary. It’s not clear to me that the two passages you cite can be taken as an absolute requirement for apostleship, thought they certainly carry some weight as you point out.
Here’s a reason that I am a bit skeptical of apostles today: true qualifications. I am heart-wrenched over Paul’s description of what it meant for him to be an apostle in II Corinthians 11:
“… in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness– besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation? If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity.”
What if these are true qualifications of an apostle? Labor, stripes, prison; beaten, stoned, shipwrecked; perils, toils, sleeplessness, hunger and fastings often; weakness and infirmity. These things are sobering and stunning, and not often found on the business cards of apostles (or anyone) in the western church.
*And yet, scripture seems to point to the continuation of apostles until the end, as seen in Ephesians 4:
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”.
Verse 13: “until we all come… to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” So the apostles and others are to continue
until then. That would seem to indicate a time which has not yet arrived in Christ’s church, probably a reference to the end of the age.
Finally, on a related subject - Pastors - mentioned in the very same passage in Ephesians: this is the only mention of Pastors in the New Testament, and there is not one word to describe their role or qualifications. And yet in the modern church it is the predominant ministry. Yet the NT says nothing about them at all. Should Pastors still be a valid office? If so what are the qualifications? And what of their role?
Any thoughts?
Scott, thanks for the questions. I’m entering a very busy couple weeks at work, so it may be a while before I get at an answer.
God Bless
Scott,
First:
I believe the section in II Corinthians you cited refers to Paul’s experience; it is not a list of apostolic qualifications. I don’t see how that section of Scripture can be used to justify the continuation of the apostolic office. If you care to flesh that out more, feel free.
Second:
In the Ephesians passage, I believe “pastors and teachers” refers to the office of elder. Elders are repeatedly instructed to to pastor (shepherd) and teach in the New Testament. (I Tim. 3:2, Titus 1:9, Acts 20:28, 1 Peter 5:1-2, etc.)
I think the whole “Five-Fold Ministry” movement reads more into this text than is actually there.
Hope that answers your questions.
God Bless