January 18 - Who's the Boss?

January 18 – Who’s the Boss?

Among all of these heresies and varying beliefs, who was going to decide who was right and who was wrong. While everyone agreed that Jesus’ taught the truth, the Gnostics claimed the had some secret access to His message and it had come to them through a series of secret teachers.

The church came up against these teachings, claiming to have the original gospel and teachings of Jesus. It came down to the authority of the church versus the heretics and their claims.

How did the Christians deal with this? Apostolic succession. The argument set forth was that if Jesus actually did have some secret, He would have told His disciples. Remember, He trusted them with His church! If, in turn, they had any secrets, they would have passed those on to the leaders that followed them. So … as the argument played out … if there were secrets that had been passed down from Jesus, the bishops who were the successors of the disciples would have them. The fact is, they completely and unan9imously denied that any secrets ever existed.

To make this claim work, the bishops had to show that they were actually the successors of the apostles. Several of these churches had lists of bishops that linked them with the apostles of Jesus. The lists were found in Rome, Antioch, Ephesus and several other locations.

While modern day historians have trouble with the veracity of some of these lists, the fact is that they existed and the church of the second century had no problem connecting itself to the apostles.

Now, there were other churches in existence that couldn’t actually show a connection to the apostles, but the reality for them was that they believed and agreed on one single faith.

Later on, things progressed and ordination could only be performed by a bishop who could prove apostolic succession. At the first, this was meant to be inclusive because it was based on the witness of all the apostles. Over time this would change, but for awhile, it worked.

The original meaning of the phrase catholic church – was a universal church. Again, this was in opposition to Gnostic groups. The universal church stood for universality and inclusiveness of the witness of all the apostles – not just secrets that some held.

It is strange, though … that the term developed over the centuries came to be centered on the authority of one apostle – Peter. The catholic church developed throughout time to mean something completely different than its beginnings.