#handed down

Apostolic Succession Is Assurance of Truth

Why should we care what the Church Fathers said?

For many Catholics, the question may seem odd, and the answer may seem obvious. But for some Catholics, and I suspect for many Protestants, it’s a fair question.

You see, ever since the dawn of the modern age (not very long ago in the big picture), the Western world has been laboring under the mistaken assumption that simply because we live later in time than ancient people we are naturally more enlightened than they were. Then, in the last century, advances in medicine and technology have convinced us that we must be smarter than anyone who lived even a few hundred years ago, let alone almost 2,000 years ago.

But is that true? Do obvious improvements in some areas of life necessarily mean that philosophy and theology are also improving over time?

Our Catholic Faith—and really any faith that is handed down from one generation to the next—is built on the assumption that truth does not, in fact, evolve, and get “more true” over time. Instead, truth has a source. For us that source is God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This is the historical event that we call the Incarnation. “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14), which means the divine Word, the Son of the Father and Second Person of the Trinity, acquired a human nature in order to reach out to humanity and reconcile us to our Creator.

And since this happened in human history, that means that there were real people who knew Jesus personally. Some of these were called his disciples, and most of those disciples (along with some others) became the people we call apostles. The word apostle means one who is sent out, and the apostles were the ones sent by Jesus to take his message of reconciliation into the world. So, rather than thinking we are naturally smarter than people who lived in the time of Jesus and the apostles, we actually believe that it’s important to listen to the people who lived closer in time to the Source of truth.

But the apostles couldn’t live forever, and when the time came, they handed the baton to those whom they chose and commissioned to succeed them. These successors of the apostles were the first bishops of the Church. Those bishops were the custodians of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. It was their job to pass on those teachings faithfully, and we believe that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, they did (see John 14:26).

This is part of the point of my book, Handed Down. The teachings of the Catholic Faith of today are trustworthy because they have been faithfully handed down through the generations in an unbroken chain that goes all the way back to the apostles and Jesus. We call this chain of teaching authority “apostolic succession.”

So who are the Church fathers? They are the early bishops—the successors of the apostles—along with other early theologians and catechists who passed on the Faith. But in addition to passing the Faith along, every generation had to further clarify and explain the Tradition and practices of the Church as well as interpret the Scripture that is itself a part of that Tradition. To be clear, every generation confirmed the conclusions of the previous generations, so we’re not saying that later generations changed Tradition. But each generation did build on the foundation of prior Tradition.

This is important, because in many ways it was the Church Fathers who defined Christianity itself by clarifying important doctrines like that of the Trinity. Even though the word Trinity doesn’t appear in Scripture, I would say that anyone who does not believe in God as a Trinity cannot call himself a Christian (let alone a Catholic). Of course, the concept of the Trinity is quite biblical (see, for example, Matthew 28:19), but it was the Church Fathers who had to interpret and clarify Scripture regarding the Trinity—and it took them 300 years before they were ready even to begin writing the Nicene Creed.

Truth doesn’t evolve. In fact, if we’re not careful, the transmission of it will devolve over time, like a game of “telephone.” But we can be confident that our Faith has not lost anything to the passing of time because of apostolic succession and because of the promise of Jesus recorded in Matthew 16:18: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

I take that promise to mean that the Holy Spirit will guide and protect the Church so that it can never become something other than what Jesus intended it to be. Contrary to what the Protestant Reformers thought, the Church could never go off the rails to such an extent that it would cease to be the Church. If it did, then hell would win. But that can never happen, because Jesus made this promise.

Therefore, for us to remain connected to our faith, we also have to remain connected to those who came before us in the Faith. In the computer world, we hear a lot about being connected to “the cloud.” But there is a much more important cloud, what the author of the letter to the Hebrews called the “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1-2). This is the communion of the saints who went before us and who now cheer us on and intercede for us as we run the race of faith.

So we as Catholics may find that we have to answer the question, Why should we care what the Church Fathers said? We care because our Faith is historical. It is not mythical; it has its origins in God’s intervention in the history of the Hebrew people, and especially in God’s revelation in the person of Jesus Christ. And the people who lived closest to that time might just have understood something about Jesus’ life and message that we will miss if we look only at the Bible, and only through our twenty-first-century eyes.

by J. L. Thurston

I was made in a factory with hundreds of others designed exactly like me. All of us brown, small, and soft. We were made to comfort. I was made to be loved by a child.

I was boxed and shipped, stored, and shipped again. I sat on display in a store where I was purchased along with diapers and formula. Then I was placed in a crib. If I’d had a heart, it would have started to beat right then and there, as I was tucked in beside a warm, curly-headed baby girl. That was my life and it was perfect. Some nights my baby would hold me, and sometimes she would just look at me until closing her eyes.

I was her bear and she was my baby.

One day, a woman I knew as the mom came and began to box everything up, me including. We were moving away. I sat in a box with some other toys for a long time. I didn’t know how long it would take to see my baby again, but I waited patiently for that box to open. And it finally did! One by one, the mom took some toys out of the box. I waited for my turn. She lifted me up and stared at me with a thoughtful expression. We were in a new house and there was lots of noise. But I didn’t see my baby and I didn’t see the crib. No. Instead, the mom lifted the lid to an old wooden chest and tucked me in carefully.

There I sat in darkness and quiet save for muffled sounds I couldn’t discern. Years went by this way. I was only given brief glimpses of light as the lid to the chest was opened just long enough for the mom to add another item to the chest. Ribbons, trophies, books, and small trinkets.

Thirty-one years. I spent thirty-one years waiting in that chest. I didn’t mind, but I did get pretty dusty. And lonely.

Then one day the woman opened the chest lid and stared down at all she had collected. She had aged terribly. I think thirty-one years had been unkind to her. I knew the feeling. Slowly, she began to remove things from the chest. Then her hand went to me and lifted me up. I was out of the chest! She placed me in a plastic bag with a few ribbons and books and handed me off to a man.

He took me with him on a car ride. I was leaving the house. Leaving. If I’d had a heart, it would have started to break right then as I realized I was being taken away from my baby. I didn’t even get a goodbye hug.

The man parked and grabbed me up, bag and all, and carried me inside a warm house. I was handed over and the bag opened up to reveal a young woman looking down at me with a questioning face.

“Your mom says this was your stuff,” the man explained.

The young woman scrutinized the bag, looking at the books, the ribbons, and me. She lifted a few of the ribbons from the bag. “Best Boys Group Singing Contest?” she said flatly. “I think her addled brain doesn’t remember which one of her kids this stuff ever belonged to.

She sounded frustrated, but mostly sad. She looked at me. And looked at me. I waited for her to pick me up, to hold me like she used to. I love you! I wanted to scream. Oh, yes, I recognized my baby right away. How could I not? I’ve been waiting to see her again for thirty-one years.

“You’re not going to throw it away, are you?” the man asked.

If I’d had a heart, it would have stopped. My baby, my young woman, my person thought about it. She actually thought about it. How cruel, how perfectly terrible it would be to wait for her for so long only to have her throw me away with the trash. Why was I ever put away in that chest?

“I don’t remember having a bear,” she said. “I can’t guarantee any of this ever belonged to me. And I can’t believe she knows anything anymore. All she does is lie. Who knows, this could be another type of manipulation. I don’t know.”

Please don’t throw me away.

And me, still in the sack, and all those things in there with me got tossed onto a table. I listened closely as the young woman and the man talked some more. The man was her dad. I don’t remember him being around when she was a baby but there was so much I missed while locked away in that chest.

I considered the aged look of the mom and the haggard eyes of my young woman, the bitterness, the sadness in her voice. Life had been unkind to them. But that is what I was there for! I wanted to scream. I’m here for you! I’m here for you!

But I waited in that bag. I could do nothing else. I wondered if this would be it for me. I was only her bear for such a short time. She didn’t have me long enough to take comfort from me now when she really needed me. If only she would pick me up, hold me, put me on her pillow. Maybe that would help.

The dad left, the house quieted, and days passed. I waited. The plastic bag crinkled and a little face peered in. A little girl. Her face was so much like my young woman it was startling.

“What’s in this, Mama?”

Little hands reached out, wrapped around me, and I was lifted from the bag. Out of the bag! I could see the house, a Christmas tree was up, and a little girl was holding me. My young woman entered the room and peered down at me, at her daughter clutching me to her chest. How good it felt to be held again!

“Oh.” She sighed and stared, thinking. “My mom said that stuff belonged to me when I was a baby, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

The little girl looked at me, holding me close so that we were nose-to-nose. “Hm. Well, I think he was your bear, Mama. Can I keep him?”

“He’s really dusty and I don’t think he’d survive a round in the washing machine.” Her voice was so much kinder when she spoke to the little girl.

“But I love him!” the little girl pleaded.

If I’d had a heart, it would have burst.

The young woman resigned, shrugging it off, but the corners of her mouth quirked up just enough. “Try to get some of that dust off or you’ll be sneezing all night.” That was all she said and she walked away.

My new little girl cheered, she hugged me so tight and gently brushed me off with her fingers. She took me to her room and right onto her bed. There were probably twenty other stuffed animals there. It took some time, but she introduced me to all of them. She called me Old Bear.

That night, my girl’s mom came to bed and sat down among all us stuffed animals. My girl cuddled up and held me. Together we listened to bedtime stories.

The mom had several glances for me. Finally, she said, “You have to be gentle with that bear, okay?”

My girl held me closer. “Yep! He loves it in my bed, I can tell. He’s going to sleep with me every night until I have a baby and then I’ll give him to her.”

The mom laughed gently. “He’ll be very old by then. I hope he can hold out.”

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