On the Orthodox Catholic Model of Apostolic Succession
Introduction One of the challenges facing a movement is how to transmit authority from a founder to succeeding generations of participants. The problem of authority transmission entails at least two parts: 1) determining new leaders and 2) unambiguously communicating that the new leaders are endowed with legitimate authority. The problem of authority transmission often is the cause of splits in religions. For example, the underlying difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims can be characterized as two different answers to the question, “Who is Muhammad's legitimate successor?” Christianity from very early on has had to face this same challenge, and, not surprisingly, different approaches have resulted in multiple communities that self-identify as Christian but consider the other communities to be defective in some way. The purpose of this paper is to explain one model of authority transmission, namely that used by churches self-identifying as Orthodox Catholic. This model is int...