Succeeding the Apostles

Well, now that I have somewhat settled into my new schedule, let's pick up where we left off (and pretend there was no delay).  We were looking at the beginnings of the Christian church and characteristics defined it.  Moving away from familiar grounds in Acts, we delve into the mysterious world of the apostolic fathers, the early martyrs, and the infantile theology by which God sustained them during the time.

As we begin our attempt at understanding the church after the Apostles, we must first set the scene:  the Apostles are dead, the gospel has spread to many areas, especially in Asia Minor (map), and now a new generation must bear the good news - but who? According to Catholic tradition, the Apostles hand-picked successors and, in so doing, conferred upon them spiritual, ecclesiastical, and sacramental authority (7 in all, for Catholics).  This well-organized, directly linear succession from Christ to the Apostles to the church fathers and so on tells us much about the governing structure of the church, or church polity, as its called. One can easily look at the Roman Catholic Church today and see the immense order and structure its built upon.

This style of polity dominated the church until the Reformation (1500s), after which polity and ecclesiastical authority became very unpopular in many non-Catholic circles.  A note here:  Protestants (generally) don't believe in apostolic succession, as described above, with its direct pipeline of spiritual authority from one person to the next.  Instead, the Protestant emphasis is the teachings of the Apostles.  If one follows the apostolic teachings, he is in "succession" and does not need to physically trace back his spiritual pedigree to Jesus and the Apostles.

In either case, new leaders emerged to lead the church.  They are known to us as the Apostolic Fathers and include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, and Clement of Rome, with others added to the list from time to time.  We know them because of their influential writings during the Early Church Age.  Because of the tremendous impact of each of these figures, we will look at them individually, along with a few other important early documents, in the posts to come.

A note before we leave:  For the early church, having a relationship with the Apostles meant orthodoxy (right belief).  They were dedicated to following the teachings of the Apostles and were warned constantly about straying from them, so naturally, the closer one was to the Apostles, the more correct / authoritative they were.  Ignatius knew John and Paul, Polycarp knew John, and Clement was in the line of Peter in Rome (again, very important for Catholics who believe in personal, direct succession).

Scripture had not yet been compiled into the New Testament as we know it, so having a leader who knew what the Apostles said was crucial to right belief. From this, many questions arise - when did Scripture come together as we know it now? What did these Christians believe? What about heresies? and so on.

Though I haven't said too much in this post, it's not hard to see that there is a LOT of huge issues that are about to happen... fast! So consider the first layer of this enormous onion peeled and check back throughout the week for more.