Originally Posted by RevG - Scripture is God breathed and profitable…
From the following you believe that scripture is the Christians only authority - right:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
James tells us: Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
According to James, all one needs is perseverance to be made complete, lacking nothing. Was James right about perseverance? Where does the bible suggest that scripture makes a Christian complete, not lacking anything?
I will start by explaining that Apostolic Successionism is a pipe dream.
Surely you admit that the NT recognizes AS. Paul is quite clear on the need of Apostolic Succession as he confirms by saying to Titus: "For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and shouldest ordain presbyters in every city, as I also appointed thee…(Titus 1:5 - 1 Tim. 4:14)
Paul ordained Titus and Titus was told to ordain other presbyters in every city just as Paul had ordained him. That is an example of apostolic succession to the third generation.
How would the first Christians know, with certainty, how to determine which claimant, (among the many competing new sects that cropped up) - was in fact a leader in the true Church founded by Christ? Easy. They simply traced the apostolic succession of the claimants to verify that their teachings and their teachers came down from the apostles and their legitimate successors?
There is no historical evidence to show succession of an unbroken line.
No?
Clement I (1st century)
'Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and
they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit,** to be the bishops and deacons of future** believers.
Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier’ Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die,
other approved men should succeed to their ministry.'
Irenaeus of Lyons (202 A. D.)
‘It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the Tradition of the Apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world.
And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about’.
‘But since it would be
too long to enumerate in such as volume as’ this the’ successions’ of’ all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper,
by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul ’ that church which has the Tradition and the with which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. For with this Church, because if its superior origin, all churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world. And it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the Apostolic Tradition’.
‘It is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church ’ those who, as I have shown,
possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the infallible charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But [it is also incumbent] to hold in suspicion others
who depart from the primitive succession,
and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth’ (ibid., 4:26:2)’ ‘The true knowledge is the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient organization of the Church throughout the whole world, and the manifestation of the body of Christ **according to the succession of bishops, by which succession the bishops have handed down the Church which is found everywhere’.
** Cyprian of Carthage, d. 258 A. D.
‘The Church is one, and as she is one, cannot be both within and without. For if she is with [the heretic] Novatian, she was not with [Pope] Cornelius. But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop [of Rome], Fabian**, by lawful ordination**, and whom, beside the honor of the priesthood, the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church**; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition,** sprang from himself. For
he who has not been ordained in the Church can neither have nor hold to the Church in any way’(Letters ‘69[75]:3 [253 A. D.]).’’
