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| The Twelve Apostles |
When asking if the expression ‘apostolic church’ refers to the church’s
missional nature, one must understand the expression in its historical
context. Clearly the use of ‘apostolic church’
(ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν) in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 referred
to the church that continued from Jesus and the Twelve to that day. In early Christianity,
the Twelve were the first bearers of the message and teachings of Jesus and they
in turn sent other messengers with this message. The pattern is heard in Paul’s statement to
Timothy: “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace
that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the
presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who
will be able to teach others also,” (2 Tim. 2:1-2).
The “one holy
catholic and apostolic church” in the
fourth century referred to the authentic and authoritative church that continued
from Jesus and the apostles, and faithfully transmitted their teaching—the teaching
of the apostles that was later canonized in the NT writings. With the rise of Gnostic
texts by the second century that claimed apostolic authorship, and by the
fourth century as heretical doctrines of Arius were spreading, it became
necessary to draw up lists of bishops that could be traced back to the Twelve.[1] As J. N. D. Kelly
says, when Christians inserted the title ‘apostolic church’ into the Nicene
Creed, they wanted to affirm the historic and verifiable continuity of the
faith of the church.[2] The emphasis was on the teaching derived from
the apostles and the inherent authority therein.
Although
‘apostolic’ did not refer at the time explicitly to missionality it did so
implicitly by the church’s connection to Jesus and the apostles. J. F. Torrance states:
The one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is the Church
continuously occupied with the interpretation, exposition and application of
the Holy Scripture, for it is in that way that the Church opens its mind and
life to the direction and correction of the Word of God. And that was precisely
what the Church was doing, not least in the theologically turbulent years
between the Nicene [AD 325] and the Constantinopolitan Councils [AD 381]. I
refer to the constant exegetical activity undertaken by the Church fathers in
their attempt to bring to consistent expression the internal connections of the
Gospel and thus, not only to clarify and defend the apostolic and catholic
faith in the face of heretical disruption, but to provide the Church with a
structural framework within which its members could meditate upon the Holy
Scriptures, worship the Holy Trinity, proclaim the Gospel of forgiveness,
reconciliation and sanctification, and so fulfill its mission in obedience to
the command of Christ.[3]
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| Tertullian |
Indeed, it is on this account only that they will be able to
deem themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of apostolic churches. Every
sort of thing must necessarily revert to its original classification. Therefore
the churches, although they are so many and so great, comprise but one primitive
church, founded by the apostles, from which they all spring. In this way all
are primitive, and all are apostolic while they are all proved to be one, in
unbroken unity, by their peaceful communion, and title of brotherhood and bond
of hospitality…[7]
From
this statement, Tertullian goes on to qualify what constitutes apostolic
churches. They are founded on the facts
that Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach and what they preached was the
gospel. This gospel message was received
by the apostolic churches from their preaching (vive voce, living voice) and subsequently by their epistles.[8]
Tertullian claimed:
If, then, these things are so, it is in the same degree made
known that all doctrine agrees with the apostolic churches—those original
formations and sources of the faith must be reckoned for truth, as undoubtedly
containing that which the very churches received from the apostles, the
apostles from Christ, Christ from God. Whereas all doctrine must be prejudged
as false that tastes like anything contrary to the truth of the churches and
apostles of Christ and God.[9]
With
this foundation Tertullian and others were able to judge any teaching as
orthodox or heretical by comparing it to the teaching of the apostles. If it was different—heterodox – then its
author was “neither an apostle nor an apostolic man; because, as the apostles
would never have taught things that were self-contradictory.”[10]
Interestingly Tertullian went on to
state: “…those churches who although they do not derive their founder from
apostles or apostolic men as being of much later date, for they are in fact
being founded daily, yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are
considered no less apostolic because they are agreed in doctrine.”[11]
In other words, Tertullian affirmed that any church which arises without a
direct tie to an eminent bishop or one of the Twelve was no less apostolic if
it held to the same teaching as the apostolic churches. For Tertullian, apostolicity was
orthodoxy. However, orthodoxy originated
in Jesus who commissioned the apostles as “the sent” in order to “go and teach
all nations.”
This
raises questions about authority, orthodoxy, and missionality. As Tertullian claimed authority is derived
from apostolic teaching.[12] Thus, someone in a line of ordained bishops
could be disqualified from ecclesial authority when deviating from apostolic
teaching. Such heresy would cancel his authority among the apostolic
churches. This would apply equally to
those who were missional but not orthodox.
A case in point is Ulfilas, the
fourth century missionary who evangelized the Goths and translated the Bible
into a Germanic language. Ulfilas was
consecrated bishop of the Gothic Christians by Eusebius of Nicomedia, bishop of
Constantinople and follower of Arius who taught the heretical doctrine that
Jesus the Son was neither equal with God the Father nor eternal. [13] Uflilas held to this Arian teaching as well. Clearly he was missional. He proclaimed the gospel in word and deed. His
missional activity led him, as some historians report, to aid 375 persecuted
Christian Goths to cross the Danube into Roman territory. Even though he labored to create the Gothic
church among Visigoths and other Germanic peoples, because of his Arian heresy,
he was not apostolic in his doctrine.
Thus, apostolicity requires not merely missionality
but orthodoxy. Both are necessary. Missionality must be orthodox in its formulations
and orthodoxy must lead to orthopraxy—going, loving one’s neighbor, and making
disciples, in the way of Jesus and the apostles. In the final analysis, apostolicity refers
foremost to the church’s grounding in the Scriptures, especially in the
teaching of the apostles—the NT—but nevertheless, “… a community of the word is
a community engaged in the movement that engaged the apostles.” [14] The church exists “by the ongoing work
and word of the apostles.”[15] For Christians, this means taking part in the
movement that engaged Jesus and the Twelve. In summary, J. F. Torrance states:
In its simplest sense the apostolicity of the Church refers
back to the original foundation of the Church once for all laid by Christ upon
the apostles, (Matt. 7:5; 1 Cor. 3:10ff; Eph. 2:20f; cf. Matt. 16:13-23; 1 Pet.
2:4-9) but it also refers to the interpretation of the existence and mission of
the Church in its unswerving fidelity to that apostolic foundation. As the
incarnate Son of the Father, Jesus regarded himself as having been anointed by
the Spirit and clothed with his power for the fulfillment of his unique
evangelical mission. (Luke 4:18f.). With
its completion in the cross and resurrection, he commissioned his disciples as
apostles to act in his name, thereby linking their subordinate mission with his
own supreme mission: ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ At the same
time he breathed his Spirit upon them, thereby constituting their sending by
him as the empirical counterpart to the sending of the Holy Spirit by the
Father in the name of the Son, which took place as Jesus had promised on the
day of Pentecost (John 17:18; 20:21; cf. 14:25f; 16:12; Lk. 24:49; Acts 2:2-8).
Jesus was the
Apostle in the absolute sense. (Heb. 3:1). The apostles, however, were sent out by him
as his chosen witnesses whose word he promised to empower as his own, and thus
to unfold in them his own self-revelation. That was the peculiar function of
the apostles, to be the link between Christ and the Church, the hinge on which
the incarnational revelation objectively given in Christ was grounded and
realized within the continuing membership of the Church. The apostolate was designed and formed by
Christ to be the nucleus of the Church corporate with himself which his own
self-witness was integrated with inspired witness to him and translated into
the appropriate form ( i. e. the New Testament Scriptures) for its
communication in history. [16]
The message and mission of Jesus
Christ is entrusted to his disciples who are called to be faithful witnesses,
from the original Twelve to those who will take their place in the mission of
announcing the kingdom of God and holding fast to the faith once for all
delivered to the saints.
[1]
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of
Catholic Theology, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1987), in Stanley J. Grenz, Theology
for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 468; Angelo Di Bernardino, Ancient Christian Doctrine 5: We Believe in the One Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2010), 56. Francis A.
Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops: The
Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church”, 155.
[2]
J. N. D. Kelly, “Catholiqué et ‘Apostliqué aux premiers siècles,” Istine (1969): 33-45, in Bernardino, 56.
[3]
Thomas F. Torrance, Trinitarian Faith:
The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Faith (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 2000), 288.
[4] Prescriptions
Against Heretics 20. (ANF 3:252) in Bernardino, 82.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8]
Ibid.
[9]
Ibid., 83.
[10]
Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12]
Hendrikus Berkof, Christian Faith,
trans. Sierd Woudstra (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 409, in Grenz, 468-470.
[13]
Everett Ferguson, ed. Encyclopedia of
Early Christianity, Vol. 1 (New York: Routledge Press, 1990), 1149.
[14]
John G. Flett, The Witness of God: The
Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth, and the Nature of Christian Community (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010),
263.
[15]
Ibid., 264.
[16]
Torrance, 285-286.
