Defending Apostolic Succession, Part IV

Defending Apostolic Succession, Part I · Part II · Part III · Part IV

Final sections, beginning with questions (by Catholics) and answers (by Chris White) and ending in peroration is not here divided into sections.

- "When did Apostolic succession end?"
- "Apostolic succession never started"

False as proven.

- "If there is no central authority then it woud be total chaos, even the heretics try to use the bible to prove their points."
- "the doctrines are very, very close and almost never heretical...."

Exactly how I feel about people with Apostolic Sucession outside Catholics.

I'd say there are four Protestantisms, outside Atheism.

1) Episcopal semi-successionists (Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists)
2) Presbyterians (Calvinists and Arminians)
3) Congregationalist / Baptist (Southern Baptist, Independent Baptist, Pentecostals, Foursquare, I recall The Walk with affection)
4) Quaker type (Quakers, Shakers, more or less Rastafarians too perhaps).

The Catholic or "full apostolic successionist" type would be to these like a fifth group.

There is however another type of chaos, like who was really validly married to whom and what marriages are thereby rendered illicit and even invalid.

You might admit quite a few are leaving one denomination and entering another one in order to divorce and remarry.

"... not because they are reading the Bible for what it plainly says, the error comes when they try to go away from its plain meaning to support their personal views"

Like you plainly did with Apostolic Succession, wiggling away from considering even Matthew 28.

My own point is, the question is somewhat of a strawman. Apostolic Tradition (even without succession, as in Nagasaki between first and second arrival or Catholic priests, sorry, second was 1868 or sth, btw, not 1945) can survive without central authority.

But it is surviving due to Apostolic tradition. Like your congregationalism is now for a few centuries also handed on by a non-apostolic one.

Also, given the fact of the Apostles, if we start from explanations rather than proofs, it is unlikely that Apostolic Tradition would die out, even had there been no specific measures about it, as we saw there was.

If it were the true faith, that is. Meaning, since we do have a tradition which hasn't died out, we may know from it these measures were taken because I and II Tim and Titus are canonical. Liberals exist who pretend they are post-Apostolic. That St Paul is here given pseudepigraphically. It is from Apostolic Tradition that I know this to be false.

- "Jesus said I will never leave you nor forsake you, if Jesus left us without leadership, then he lied. Did Jesus abandon us?"
- "... a plan a million times better than Apostolic succession ..."

Ah, Reference is John 14:16.

But the Holy Ghost was sent on Pentecost and promised here to the ... twelve. In other words, especially in view of Pentecost being a once event and Timothy receving the Holy Ghost by the hands of St Paul, the plan you try to identify clearly does imply Apostolic Succession.

Note, the world cannot accept Him. The 4 types of Protestant are part of the world who do not accept Apostolic Succession.

Also, note the Council of Apostles in Jerusalem - "it has pleased the Holy Ghost and us". Also an indication the Holy Ghost is in NT times clearly adressing the mass of the faithful through the leadership, as presumed correctly by the questioner.

28:51 Two chapters later, Christ is still talking to the twelve - or to the eleven if Judas is already gone.

This means, the Holy Ghost was promised to the twelve first bishops of the Catholic Church.

29:08 Here we have a promise that the Holy Ghost guarantees the college of Apostles and each "successive/overlapping college" of their successors will never err collectively, will keep all necessary truth in sufficient of them.

29:39 Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews is talking about _sanctifying grace,_ received through hands of apostles or their successors.

See Acts 8 on how Samaria needs the Apostles to receive the Holy Ghost.

I obviously agree with this being the fulfilment.

Note also, here we have the law "written on hearts" as opposed to tablets of stone.

This means, it is, if either, rather reading letters than hearing bishops which is debunked as unnecessary.

We know from elsewhere, this is not true for the bishop who must know the Scriptures. (Laymen are also allowed to know them.)

Both prophecy and fulfilment verses in Hebrews 10 refer to a remission of sins which may be looked for elsewhere as how to details. John 20:21-3, does it ring a bell?

Prophecy being made about "house of Israel" means that the Catholic Church is the Israel of the New Covenant.

Another reason for there being both a tradition and a succession in it. There were in the Old Covenant.

"The Holy Spirit is the plan that God had to be with us to the end of the world"

Indeed.

But in the first year, first decade every time later on in Biblically recorded events, there was a clergy transmitting Him to both simple believers and to new clergy.

If anyone could have transmitted Him by laying of hands, how come Simon Magus didn't try some other guy, more naive, after Peter?

You might say, Simon Magus was a worldly man, which he was. He could therefore have imagined a clerical situation which was not there. This is contradicted by the fact that the Apostles had to come to Samaria in the first place.

It is instead those who see in Apostolic Succession a mere worldly claim who are missing the things of the Holy Ghost.

31:45 Nevertheless, Christ never called the Holy Ghost "vicar". In so many words, though in effect He did so call Him (as with St Peter, other story).

Also, the first Pope was the one giving or denying the Holy Ghost to Samarians, that is when Simon Magus was denied Him.

So, if that doesn't make him representative of the Holy Ghost and therefore Vicar of Christ, I don't know what does.

"I know it is hard to believe the Holy Spirit can really keep it all together"

Not for a Catholic. That is why we claim He has kept it - us - together since day 1, Pentecost.

"But this comes only from a lack of faith the Holy Spirit is real or has any power"

Exactly my point both against Modernists denying Biblical inerrancy in hagiographers and against Protestants denying the Church as a whole - and a visible whole at that - is infallible, unable to define false doctrine as truth to be believed by all.

32:40 "without apostolic succession the Catholic Church is at best just another denomination and one with a particularly strange interpretation of the Bible."

No, you have not demonstrated that, you have claimed it as a starting poing, then attacked Apostolic Succession over the video, and then often indirectly admitted that had it pleased God to structure the Church without the succession in sacramental powers (contrary to Jeremiah 31, since this is what hands us God's forgiveness, see John 20!) we would still need to follow the structure of teachers depicted in very many verses of letters to Timothy.

Which leaves us with a tradition able to authoritatively interpret - which in turn means, we can trust the tradition on Apostolic Succession too.

33:01 "and there is no record in the Bible of it ever having been done"

You may perhaps realise what you missed back seven years ago, when you read my comments, I hope? II Tim 1:6, again.

Or Acts 8, 9 and 13.