The Wesleyan Doctrine of Apostolic Succession
Apostolic succession is an essential Christian doctrine pertaining to our understanding of ordained ministry and the leadership of the church. It is time for those of us in the Wesleyan tradition to claim this doctrine and articulate it in a persuasive way for the evangelical world.
What is the doctrine of apostolic succession? It finds its origin in the Scripture where Jesus says to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And then Jesus says, “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:15-19; cf. Mark 8:27-29 and Luke 9:18-20).
So there’s a question by Jesus, an answer by Peter, and then a follow-up proclamation by Jesus. That follow-up is significant, because in it Jesus speaks to the foundation of the church. What all of this means is debated, and different traditions within Christianity have come to different conclusions.
The Liturgical Interpretation of Apostolic Succession
For Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and many Anglicans, apostolic succession means that authentic ministry is tied to the unbroken tactile succession of ordination from St. Peter down to the present. According to this view, Jesus gave authority to Peter to found the church; his “ordination” by Jesus was given to the other apostles as well and eventually to a new generation of ministers through subsequent ordinations. To be within the apostolic succession, a member of the clergy has to have been ordained by a bishop who himself is in that line of succession. “Tactile” refers to the laying on of hands by the bishop at the moment of ordination. We will refer to this as the “liturgical interpretation” of apostolic succession for the sake of simplicity.
Roman Catholics will go a step further and insist that apostolic succession is also tied to fidelity to the successor of St. Peter as bishop of Rome. In other words, those who are in the line of apostolic succession must be in communion with the pope. For the Roman church, Jesus’ comments in Matthew 16:19 about giving the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter, along with the authority to bind and loose, are decisive in the authority held by bishops of Rome ever since.
Methodists and other Wesleyans have never shown a great deal of interest in the doctrine of apostolic succession. The reason for this lack of interest is because Methodist clergy do not stand in the line of succession as interpreted by these other traditions. On the American side of the Atlantic Ocean, all Methodist clergy ultimately trace their ordinations back to John Wesley’s ordination of Thomas Coke as a superintendent (or bishop) prior to the Christmas Conference of 1784. Since Wesley was not an ordained bishop in the Church of England, there can be no apostolic succession through him according to the liturgical interpretation of the doctrine.
The danger of ceding the interpretation of apostolic succession to the version held by Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and many Anglicans is that such an interpretation invalidates the ministry of all clergy outside that understanding of the succession. That not only includes Methodists and other Wesleyans; it also includes Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, and a host of others.
But is the liturgical interpretation of apostolic succession the only interpretation? Is it even the best interpretation?
In fact, the liturgical interpretation of apostolic succession faces basic challenges in terms of its believability. That is the case both historically and theologically. Historically, it depends on the notion of unbroken tactile succession from Peter and the other apostles down to the present. That means that the apostles had to have acted as bishops—in the way we think of bishops—and had to have ordained with the laying on of hands. Furthermore, this process had to have continued afterward in the early generations of the Christian church in the same manner.
The problem is that there is no historical evidence for what the practice of ordination looked like until the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, which dates from circa A.D. 230. Indeed, in the earliest post-New Testament texts—such as the First Letter of Clement and Didache (both c. A.D.90-100)—it appears that clergy were appointed either by a council of elders or the whole congregation in each city. Even if bishops were individually ordaining elders during this period, the available evidence suggests that the bishops were chosen and appointed from among the congregations they served. That’s not apostolic succession, as the liturgical interpretation would have it.
In short, there is simply no way for us to cut through the mists of the early history of the church to know how all bishops and elders were selected and put into office. It is likely that there were centuries of variation depending on locale. For what it’s worth, John Wesley referred to the uninterrupted succession from St. Peter as “a fable which no man ever did or can prove” in a 1786 article in the Arminian Magazine.
The liturgical interpretation of apostolic succession faces an even greater challenge theologically. Jesus says in Matthew 16:18 that “on this rock I will build my church.” In the liturgical interpretation, the rock Jesus was talking about is Peter himself. And the reason that unbroken tactile succession is so important is exactly that the liturgical interpretation of succession depends on the flesh of Peter and every subsequent ordaining bishop: The man has to have touched the man, who touched the man, etc.
The notion that our Lord Jesus Christ would have made authentic ordained ministry dependent on the contingency of such a process simply beggars belief. What if, at any point in church history, all the apostolically ordained bishops had died in some disaster? Would the church be left without sacraments and ministry because of an accident? Given the weight of what was exchanged verbally between Jesus and Peter, are we really meant to believe that the “rock” in question was Peter’s body?
The Evangelical Interpretation of Apostolic Succession
Another interpretation of the doctrine of apostolic succession is possible. A comparison between it and the liturgical interpretation will show its many advantages. We will call this alternative the “evangelical interpretation.”
The evangelical interpretation of apostolic succession takes a different tack. It does not need to make dubious historical claims related to early church ordination practices. And it doesn’t need to depend on the contingencies of the right person touching an ordination candidate in order for that ordination to be valid. Instead, the evangelical interpretation sees the interaction between Jesus and Peter in Matthew 16 as being about the substance of Peter’s confession. What happens there is important not because of who says “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” but rather because of the words of the confession themselves.
What this means is that true apostolic succession is a succession of doctrine and preaching. Jesus’ proclamation to Peter has to do with the notion that the church will be built on the rock of faithful testimony carried into the world by preachers who are willing and eager to proclaim it in every circumstance. Those who stand in the apostolic succession are those who faithfully carry forth the teaching of Christ for the sake of a world in need of salvation.
The evangelical interpretation has the added advantage of emphasizing what the Bible actually emphasizes: the preaching of the message of Jesus. We see that in Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2). We see it in the Apostle Paul’s insistence on preaching “Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23). We see it in Paul’s instruction to Timothy to “preach the word” and give the people “sound teaching” (2 Timothy 4:1-5). Apostolic succession means carrying forth the message of and about Jesus. That is the plainest sense of what was going on between Jesus and Peter in Matthew 16.
Apostolic Succession and the Wesleyan Tradition
The evangelical interpretation of apostolic succession has great resonance with the Wesleyan tradition. If we look to the background of Methodism in the history of the Church of England, we can see how much early Anglicans held to the evangelical interpretation of apostolic succession during the Protestant Reformation. As the reformer Richard Taverner writes in 1540, “The office of such as will be called Christ’s apostles is to go into the world and preach Christ’s Gospel.” For Taverner, only these people deserve to be what he calls “successors of the apostles and persons apostolic” (Taverner, Postils on Epistles and Gospels).
This emphasis on apostolic succession as a succession of doctrine and preaching continued into the next generation of the newly Protestant Church of England. John Jewel, the bishop of Salisbury, argues in his Apologie of the Church of England that no one can be seen as standing in the apostolic succession simply by virtue of the office he holds. According to Jewel, the true preacher in apostolic succession “runneth up and down into every country to preach the gospel, not only openly abroad, but also privately from house to house.” He “doth the part of an Evangelist, that he fulfilleth the work and ministry of Christ.”
That evangelical inheritance from the Reformation era was received by Wesley and became the basis for his own understanding of apostolic succession. Up until the mid-1740s, Wesley held something along the lines of the liturgical interpretation. But that changed in a decisive way by the annual conference of 1747, and Wesley began to place his emphasis on doctrine and preaching as the true basis for apostolic succession. As the conference minutes that year state regarding the nature of pastoral ministry, “As God variously dispenses his gifts of nature, providence and grace, both the offices themselves and the officers in each ought to be varied from time to time.”
“True apostolic succession,” as the historian Frank Baker wrote, “for [Wesley] consisted in having the apostolic spirit, a possibility and a responsibility not only for every preacher, but even for every Christian” (Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England). That apostolic spirit consists of two things: faithful doctrine and the faithful zeal to proclaim that doctrine to sinners in need. Wesley’s conviction about this fact is the thing that led him to the ordinations of Thomas Coke, Richard Whatcoat, and Thomas Vasey prior to the Christmas Conference of 1784.
Apostolic Succession and the Wesleyan Future
Methodists and other Wesleyans should claim true apostolic succession as a succession of faithful doctrine and preaching. Such an interpretation of apostolic succession promises to reinvigorate our confidence in both our ministry and our mission. Our pastors are as legitimate as any ever were—so long as they remain willing to carry out the apostolic mission inherited from those who received it from Jesus himself.
The early 20th-century Methodist preacher Jesse Lyman Hurlbut summarized the meaning of the church and the meaning of apostolic succession in a work in 1902 entitled Our Church: What Methodists Believe, and How They Work. Hurlbut writes, “The holy catholic Church is the one apostolic Church, and the only apostolic Church, which has been in the world ever since the Holy Spirit descended upon the day of Pentecost. Its true succession is not perpetuated in any formal organization, but in the generations of earnest souls, vitally united to Jesus Christ, who have lived in the world since Christ ascended to heaven.”
The unity in Christ that Hurlbut writes about is a unity through the teaching and person of Jesus Christ. It begins with Peter’s confession, and from there it descends through all the generations of doctrine and preaching for the sake of the Kingdom of God. We stand firmly within that succession.
Andrew C. Thompson is the lead pastor of First Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds a Th.D. from Duke University and hosts the Spirit Power & Grace podcast.