There is an argument for the apostolic succession of the baptized that takes into account the early church. It’s Peter Leithart’s The Priesthood of the Plebs. Have you read it?

You can also search Peter’s blog for related posts like this one.

The first line of the mission statement of this blog is “We seek to be thoroughly Biblical, comprehensively catholic, and true to the Reformation faith.” Given your comment immediately above regarding the Church fathers, what is meant by “comprehensively catholic”?

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

Do you know of a single church father who thought that apostolic succession consists in baptism? If not, does that concern you?

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

For what it’s worth. I think this is a much better way to approach the issue than saying that succession is a chain of ideas. It’s a chain of persons.

Thanks for your post. From my point of view, it is a helpful corrective. I would like to offer a suggestion regarding one of your paragraphs. You wrote:

The difference between Catholics and Protestants on Scripture and tradition is not that Catholics ascribe an interpretive role and authority to the church while Protestants do not. Rather, the key difference is that Catholics believe that their magisterium can and has taught infallibly (on certain occasions) while Protestants believe that only the Bible is an infallible authority and that all interpretive magisteria and their interpretations are always fallible and to be subordinated in authority to Scripture itself.

I think that infallible vs. fallible magisterial authority is not the *key* difference, although it is an important difference. The reason why it is not the *key* difference is that Catholics and Protestants would be no less divided even if the Catholic magisterium were not infallible (in the respects in which it claims to be infallible). The key difference, in my opinion, does not have anything to do with infallibility; it lies in the different conceptions of the nature of magisterial authority. For Protestants, apostolic succession means holding the doctrine taught by the apostles. Calvin, for example, makes this clear in his Institutes. For that reason, the Protestant paradigm entails that one “finds the Church” by finding those who teach what one believes, according to one’s interpretation, to be the Apostolic doctrine. That paradigm is for that reason, in my opinion, intrinsically individualistic and consumeristic.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has always held that apostolic succession (and apostolicity) means receiving authority by way of an unbroken lineage of sacramental succession extending back through the Apostles to Christ. In other words, in the Catholic tradition, magisterial authority does not descend straight down from heaven to the ordinand, as a Montanist might receive some supernatural message. It comes through the *incarnate* Christ, and thus through His Apostles, and by the laying on of their hands it comes through those whom the Apostles appointed to succeed them (e.g. St. Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 42), and so on, down to the present day. Thus, in the Catholic tradition, valid ordination depends upon who is doing the ordaining. Being a baptized believer is not sufficient to be capable of validly ordaining someone. Therefore, from the Catholic point of view, they only are true shepherds who are validly ordained. From this point of view, Protestant ‘ordinations’ are not valid at all, because they lack apostolic succession, having abandoned that doctrine and practice at the Reformation. So from the Catholic point of view, Protestant bodies are not Churches, but rather communities. In other words, from the Catholic point of view, Protestants have no magisterium, having no valid orders. So the difference is far greater than “infallible vs. fallible” magisterial authority. Even if the Catholic magisterium were not infallible (in the respects in which it claims to be infallible), the Catholic Church would view Protestant bodies as having no valid orders, and thus no magisterial authority.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

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I agree that one either becomes an isolated individual or yields his or her interpretive authority to a particular church tradition (“tradition” understood as that particular church’s interpretation of scritpure).

The dilemma is which tradition does one yield to? If we say we yield to the one that conforms to scripture, then isn’t that circular? Is there any other way to choose between competing traditions, (creeds, councils, etc)?

It was also interesting to read that the early reformers had a higher view of baptism than the Roman church! I don’t think that would go over too well on a Presbytery exam.