Pope Pius XII

I suppose Monty Python wouldn’t agree.

Even though Monty Python isn’s exactly my deity either.

Arnold Harris

Mount Horeb WI

“The Bishop!”

(Note, “Special Effects by the Moderator of the Church of Scotland”)

Bishop Pair

I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I find the various positions to be rather interesting in themselves, not to mention the interesting fact that many of these positions have analogous ones in various disputes within the Islamic tradition.

You hit the nail on the head when it comes to my rejection of Apostolic Succession.

Perhaps I should say instead, my rejection is of how we’re told to accept Apostolic Succession as presented by the Church today. The passing down of authority from one to another is Biblical. I don’t reject that. I do reject that Archbishop So-And-So has Apostolic authority simply because some cabal of men say he does. I follow Christ, not Paul. And if Archbishop So-And-So doesn’t line up with the Word of God he isn’t a man to be listened to.

To come to the defense of Protestantism, I think that a lot of the anti-bishop stuff is a reaction to the specific bishops of past eras, many of whom were terrible, laying on of hands or not. Paul said “Follow me as I follow Christ”, and many Protestants would say that their rejection of the old hierarchy was based on following those who actually had the blessing of God, and not those who had the blessing of some organization which had descended, in their view, into corruption.

You hit the nail on the head when it comes to my rejection of Apostolic Succession. Any vain organization can place their seal upon anyone. Because a seal is placed does not mean whatever is being sealed is worth a lick.

“Follow me as I follow Christ,” seems to say to me there is a way of verifying that Paul is indeed righteously following Christ outside of Apostolic say-so. If there wasn’t these words would be meaningless because we’d only have Paul’s word for knowing how Christ conducted Himself.

So, the question is: If Apostolic Succession fails, what authority do we petition to know the ways of Christ? And if there isn’t an outside authority to take our petitions to, how can we recognize when corruption enters into the Church?

This post, too, is pretty accurate. (I don’t have statistics on percentages of believers that are Protestant vs. Catholic vs. Orthodox vs. whatever, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn Dean is right about those, too.)

To come to the defense of Protestantism, I think that a lot of the anti-bishop stuff is a reaction to the specific bishops of past eras, many of whom were terrible, laying on of hands or not. Paul said “Follow me as I follow Christ”, and many Protestants would say that their rejection of the old hierarchy was based on following those who actually had the blessing of God, and not those who had the blessing of some organization which had descended, in their view, into corruption.

Now, maybe some of those Protestants have thrown the baby out with the bath water. But, again, that’s not a vice unique to Protestantism.

If the varying sects of Christianity believe that the authority of the Apostles now reside in the Bishops, assuming this is correct (I’m not going to argue it one way or another), why do the schisms that exist within the Church exist at all? If Apostolic authority is truly handed down as you explain it to be, and this authority is sanctioned by God, shouldn’t all the Bishops within Christianity be on the same page theologically? I mean, why aren’t inroads being made to unify the Church when, instead, we see the exact opposite happening?

Why isn’t there a shift within the Church to truly unify. It’s great to talk about Apostolic authority existing within the office of the Bishop but what does that authority matter if we’re talking about Protestant Bishops, Catholic Bishops, or Orthodox Bishops instead of one universal Bishop that all sects will recognize?