"The apostles died almost two thousand years ago. Why should a bishop today claim their authority?" It's a fair question, and the answer goes straight back to the New Testament.
Short answer: Apostolic succession is the unbroken handing on of the apostles' office, through the laying on of hands, to the bishops who succeed them. The apostles appointed successors and told them to do the same. It matters because it links today's Church to the apostles in teaching, sacraments, and authority.
Key verses on apostolic succession
- "May another take his office." (Acts 1:20)
- "They appointed presbyters for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, commended them to the Lord" (Acts 14:23)
- "stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands" (2 Timothy 1:6)
- "And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well." (2 Timothy 2:2)
- "appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you" (Titus 1:5)
Scripture quotations are from the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
What Catholics Actually Teach
The Catechism quotes the Second Vatican Council: "In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them their own position of teaching authority" (CCC 77).
It explains how this happened: "In order that the mission entrusted to them might be continued after their death, [the apostles] consigned, by will and testament, as it were, to their immediate collaborators the duty of completing and consolidating the work they had begun" (CCC 861). The apostles' office of shepherding the Church is "a charge destined to be exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops" (CCC 862).
What Catholics do not teach:
- That bishops are new apostles. Bishops receive no new public revelation. They guard what the apostles taught.
- That succession guarantees personal holiness. A validly ordained bishop can sin gravely. Judas was one of the Twelve.
- That lay believers have no priesthood. All the baptized share in Christ's priesthood (see Objection a).
The Biblical Case
1. Jesus sent the apostles as the Father sent Him
The risen Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (John 20:21). He commanded them to make disciples of all nations and promised, "I am with you always, until the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19-20). The apostles would die, but the mission would last until the end of the age. It had to be handed on.
2. The apostles filled a vacant office
After Judas fell, St. Peter quoted the Psalms: "May another take his office" (Acts 1:20). The apostles prayed for God to show who should "take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away." Then "the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was counted with the eleven apostles" (Acts 1:25-26). Before Pentecost, the apostles' first recorded decision was to fill an office by succession.
3. Authority was given by the laying on of hands
The apostles "prayed and laid hands on" the first seven chosen to serve (Acts 6:6). St. Paul and St. Barnabas "appointed presbyters for them in each church" (Acts 14:23). St. Paul reminded St. Timothy of "the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands" (2 Timothy 1:6; compare 1 Timothy 4:14). Ordination is a gift passed on through an apostolic act.
4. The apostles' delegates appointed and judged others
St. Paul told St. Titus, "I left you in Crete so that you might set right what remains to be done and appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you" (Titus 1:5). He told St. Timothy, "Do not lay hands too readily on anyone" (1 Timothy 5:22), and "Do not accept an accusation against a presbyter unless it is supported by two or three witnesses" (1 Timothy 5:19). St. Timothy and St. Titus held authority over local presbyters. That is the role bishops inherited.
5. Four generations in one verse
"And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well" (2 Timothy 2:2). Count them: St. Paul, St. Timothy, "faithful people," and "others." Succession is built into the text.
6. Succession guards true doctrine
St. Paul warned the Ephesian presbyters that "from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth" (Acts 20:30). Authorized shepherds were God's safeguard against false teachers.
Objections Answered
(a) "All believers are priests, so we don't need an ordained line."
At its strongest: St. Peter tells all Christians that they are "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own" (1 Peter 2:9), and calls them "a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices" (1 Peter 2:5). A special class of ordained men seems unnecessary.
Answer: Catholics affirm the priesthood of all believers. But St. Peter is quoting God's words to Israel: "You will be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6). Israel was a priestly people and still had ordained priests. The Catechism teaches that the common and ministerial priesthoods "differ essentially," and that "the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood" (CCC 1547).
(b) "What matters is succession of doctrine, not of persons."
At its strongest: St. Paul says even an apostle who preached another gospel would be "accursed" (Galatians 1:8). Fidelity to the apostles' teaching, found in Scripture, is what counts. A chain of ordinations means nothing if the teaching is corrupt.
Answer: Scripture never separates the two. St. Paul handed on both the teaching and the office to the same men: St. Timothy received the laying on of hands and was told, "Guard this rich trust" (2 Timothy 1:6, 14). The early Church used succession precisely to prove doctrine. St. Irenaeus answered the Gnostics, who claimed secret apostolic teachings, by pointing to the public succession of bishops (see below). And "succession of doctrine" raises a hard question: who decides when teaching is faithful? Christ gave an answer: shepherds who stand in a visible line from the apostles. (See also Was There a Great Apostasy?)
(c) "In the New Testament, 'bishop' and 'presbyter' were the same office."
At its strongest: St. Paul summoned "the presbyters of the church at Ephesus" (Acts 20:17) and called them "overseers" (Acts 20:28). Titus 1:5-7 uses "presbyters" and "bishop" for the same men. Many scholars believe a single bishop over each city developed only in the second century.
Answer: Catholics can grant that New Testament titles were fluid. But the substance of the office is plainly there. The apostles, and delegates like St. Timothy and St. Titus, had authority over local presbyters: appointing them, ordaining them, and judging accusations against them. By about 107–110, St. Ignatius of Antioch writes to several Churches that each has a bishop, presbyters, and deacons, and says, "Apart from these, there is no Church" (Trallians 3). The names settled; the apostolic structure was there from the start.
(d) "The apostles were unique eyewitnesses. No one can succeed them."
At its strongest: To replace Judas, the candidate had to be one of "the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us," someone who could "become with us a witness to his resurrection" (Acts 1:21–22). The Church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Ephesians 2:20), and a foundation is laid once. Bishops today saw nothing.
Answer: Agreed on the first point, and the Church says so. The apostles' role as "the chosen witnesses of the Lord's Resurrection" is the "one aspect that cannot be transmitted" (CCC 860). Bishops are not new eyewitnesses or new foundations. But Scripture itself shows that the apostles' office of teaching and governing was handed on. St. Timothy saw no risen Christ in Galilee, yet St. Paul gave him the laying on of hands (2 Timothy 1:6), the duty to "Guard this rich trust" (2 Timothy 1:14), and the command to entrust it "to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well" (2 Timothy 2:2). The foundation is laid once. The house is built on it for every generation, and Christ promised to be with that work "until the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
The Early Church Agrees
Scripture shows the apostles handing on their office. The generation that knew them shows the same thing, in Rome, Antioch, Gaul and North Africa, within about a hundred years.
- Pope St. Clement I (St. Clement of Rome) (Letter to the Corinthians, c. AD 96, approximate): the apostles, preaching "through countries and cities," "appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons" (ch. 42). "Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate." So the apostles "appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry." (ch. 44). He warns that "our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate" those who served well. This is a bishop of Rome, writing while St. John was likely still alive, describing succession as the apostles' own plan.
- St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. AD 107–110), bishop of Antioch within living memory of the apostles, tells the Church at Smyrna: "See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father," and "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Smyrnaeans 8). To the Trallians: "Apart from these, there is no Church" (Trallians 3).
- St. Irenaeus of Lyons (Against Heresies, c. AD 180), a disciple of St. Polycarp, who knew St. John: "we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times" (3.3.1). He then lists the bishops of Rome and concludes: "In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us." (3.3.3)
- Tertullian (Prescription Against Heretics, c. AD 200, approximate) challenged heretical groups: "Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning" (ch. 32), so that the first bishop could name as "his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men."
Conclusion
Apostolic succession is not a later invention. It begins in Acts 1, runs through the laying on of hands in Acts and the Pastoral Letters, and is defended by name in St. Clement and St. Irenaeus. It is how Christ keeps His promise to be with His Church "until the end of the age." (For more on St. Peter's place among the apostles, see Is the Papacy Biblical?)
If you belong to a Christian community with no link to the apostles' successors, ask the question Tertullian asked: can your community show its roll of bishops back to the beginning? The Catholic Church can.
Come home. That roll of bishops, reaching from the apostles to today, is kept and still growing in the Catholic Church. Christ did not found many churches. He founded one, on St. Peter and the apostles (Matthew 16:18), and that Church is the Catholic Church. "It is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained" (CCC 816). If you are a baptized Christian, you already share "a certain, although imperfect, communion" with her (CCC 838). Every truth you already hold is a call to the rest of the way. Christ is calling you into the Catholic Church.
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FAQ
Which Churches have apostolic succession? The Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, and a few smaller Churches such as the Assyrian Church of the East. The Catholic Church recognizes that these Churches "possess true sacraments, above all - by apostolic succession - the priesthood and the Eucharist" (CCC 1399; see CCC 838). Communities born of the Reformation lack the sacrament of Holy Orders (CCC 1400). (See What Is the Difference Between Catholic and Orthodox?) Valid succession is not the whole of Christ's plan. These Churches remain in "a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church" (CCC 838), and their gifts "are in themselves calls to 'Catholic unity'" (CCC 819). Full communion means communion with the bishop of Rome, St. Peter's successor.
Does every bishop trace back to an apostle? That is the claim: each bishop is ordained by bishops in an unbroken line from the apostles. The earliest links are known mainly through lists like St. Irenaeus's.
Sources
Scripture (NABRE, bible.usccb.org): Exodus 19:6; Matthew 16:18; Matthew 28:19-20; John 20:21; Acts 1:20-26; Acts 6:6; Acts 14:23; Acts 20:17, 28-30; Galatians 1:8; Ephesians 2:20; 1 Timothy 4:14; 1 Timothy 5:19, 22; 2 Timothy 1:6, 14; 2 Timothy 2:2; Titus 1:5-7; 1 Peter 2:5, 9.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (vatican.va): 77; 816; 819; 838; 860; 861; 862; 1399, 1400; 1547.
Church Fathers (newadvent.org): St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 42, 44 (ANF vol. 1); St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians 3 and Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8 (ANF vol. 1); St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.1–3 (ANF vol. 1); Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics 32 (ANF vol. 3).