Apostolic Succession and Tradition

Deus, in adjutorium intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

Since I brought up the subject of "Authority," it would be a good thing to follow up with one or two posts on Apostolic Succession and Tradition. In the earliest days of the Church people had no trouble recognizing doctrines and teachings of Our Lord. They traced the succession from the Apostles. That line of bishops goes all the way back to the Apostles themselves. The Bible itself attests to this. Paul in 2 Timothy, 2:2, tells Timothy, "What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." Since heretics could interpret as they wanted, something other than Scripture needed to be used to test doctrine. Remember that until the late 300s there was no complete Bible. There were writings, Old Testament and New, and there were preachings. The Apostles handed down this "tradition" through the generations.

Those we call the early Church Fathers depended on the revelation passed on in an unbroken succession of bishops. Pope Clement I, successor to Peter, in the year 80 A.D., less than 50 years after the death, resurrection, ascension of Our Lord and descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles, wrote in a letter to the Corinthians 41:4-5, 44:1-3, "Through countryside and city the apostles preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers....they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry."

Irenaeus, who it is believed first used the name "Catholic" (universal) to identify the Christians, wrote Against Heresies  in 189 A.D.  "And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times..." He writes of Polycarp, "Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth..."

Skipping over a couple of others I could cite, I will note something Augustine wrote, 397 A.D.
"There are many other things which most properly can keep me in the Catholic Church's bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection gave the charge of feeding his sheep, up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which not without reason belongs to this Church alone..."

With that, I will leave off and continue in a future post about Apostolic Tradition.

May 19, 2015