I hope you don't mind me jumping in, since there have already been non-Christians posting here (btw - Angellous, would you want to move this thread out of same faith debates?).
What do you think about apostolic succession?
Personally, I think that as a doctrine, it's rather limiting upon God.
Several Christian groups claim it: the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Anglican churches among others.
It occurs to me that Anglican claims and rationales for their own Apostolic Succession must also support the Roman Catholic Church's claim. If Apostolic Sucession is valid, it's a branching tree, not a single vine.
Do you think that the abuses by the Roman Catholic church in the Dark Ages, and indeed the present, have violated the claim? In other words, is it theologically justified?
I don't personally give the idea of Apostolic Succession much weight in the first place for anyone, but I can understand both sides:
- the Catholic version: Apostolic Succession is based on the divine merits of God, not the human merits of the individual bishops. Any human is going to fall short of being worthy of Apostolic Succession on their own merit, so the idea that a bad bishop can negate Apostolic Succession by being bad is based on an incorrect premise: nobody is worthy of it, and it keeps going anyway.
- the Donatist version (or my take on it): As it says in the Gospels, "by their fruits you shall know them." Abuses by the Church are "bad fruits" that demonstrate a "bad tree", which indicates that the Church is not the True Church. Since Apostolic Succession could only be posessed by the True Church, the Church cannot therefore posess it.
When I consider the Bible verses that people usually cite to support Apostolic Succession, I think the idea's Biblical support is pretty tenuous. IMO, it takes some creative interpretation to start from "on this rock I will build my Church" and "binding and loosing", and end up with Apostolic Succession. Of course, most of the denominations that have some version of Apostolic Succession also believe in Holy Tradition as a source of doctrine, so perhaps that shores up the sketchy Biblical support to the point where this isn't an issue for them.
Is the claim historically viable?
Even if we assume that Apostolic Succession could work if we have an unbroken chain, I don't think so.
Even the Catholic Church's version of the history of very early Christianity is kinda fuzzy for the first century or two. One of the key points about Apostolic Succession is that it must be unbroken, so any gap in the chain, anywhere from present day back to Jesus and Peter, known or unknown, deliberate or accidental, voids everything from the gap forward.
Of course, this doesn't assume divine intervention. I know plenty of Catholics who believe that God specifically protects Apostolic Succession.
