Davide's Notes

Before looking at why and how Ireneaus deals with apostolic succession, a few words on Hegesippus (born c. 110, wrote c. 165-175), according to Eusebius (our main source about him) a Palestinian Jew, converted to Christianity.

Eusebius says in HE IV.8.2 that Hegesippus was a "well known" ecclesiastical writer. According to HE II.23.3, he "lived immediately after the apostles", and this is what allows him to be authoritative in what he says. In HE IV.22, Eusebius apparently quotes from Hegesippus's books of Memories; this is the passage that interests me here, in the CCEL translation:

And when I had come to Rome I remained there until Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. And Anicetus was succeeded by Soter, and he by Eleutherus. In every succession, and in every city that is held which is preached by the law and the prophets and the Lord."

This is a disputed passage. The crux interpretationis becomes apparent reading the Greek mss:

γενομενος δε εν 'Ρωμη διαδοχην εποιησαμην μηχρις 'Ανικητου

διαδοχην εποιησαμην has been traditionally rendered as "I composed a catalogue of bishops", and this would therefore be one of the first attestations of a sort of apostolic succession. Against this, Harnack et al. have argued that διαδοχη in the sense of "list, catalogue, succession" is rare in Eusebius, and that διαδοχην would therefore be a corrupt reading of something like διατριβην or διαγωγην; but διαδοχη does occur in this sense in HE V.5.9, "In the third book of his work Against Heresies he has inserted a list of the bishops of Rome" (he's speaking of Irenaeus here, see below) and in HE V.12.2, "After him the succession in the episcopate was: ..."; so I am not sure if this objection really stands. It seems a bit more strange that, if this was really a list, Eusebius does not write it down (like he does for Ireneaus, for example), especially since Hegesippus was clearly kept in high esteem by Eusebius. It has also been said that Rufinus of Aquileia (died 410) gives support to the translation reported above, since he translates the Greek into permansi ibi; on the other hand, it is well known that Rufinus was accused to be not a very accurate translator (cf. his quarrel with Jerome on Rufinus' translation of Origen's First Principles). Certainly, this is not an exceedingly clear text.

Be as it may, apostolic succession is a key feature of Irenaeus' argument against the Gnostics. The chapter to look at is AH III.3. He mantains that if the apostles really wanted to give hidden instructions to "the perfect", they in the first place would have given them to their successors (who, by definition, were to be first and foremost "the perfect"). But apparently they have not, because their successors (the bishops) do not teach what the heretics teach; so there were no hidden instructions, and therefore those who teach things that are contrary to what the successors of the apostles teach are really heretics.
It is clear that for this logic to work, one needs to know with certainty who the real successors of the apostles are. And this is why Irenaeus is so concerned about apostolic succession. But since it is "tedious" to track all the bishops of all the Churches, he focuses on two main points:

1. apostolic succession in the Church of Rome
2. apostolic succession in Asiatic Churches
   

For the first point, we come across the highly debated passage in AH III.3.2:

Ad hanc enim ecclesiam propter potiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui sunt undique fideles, in qua semper ab his qui sunt undique conservata ea quae est ab apostolis traditio.

which I would explicitly render in Italian (for my own clarity) as

Infatti occorre che, a causa della sua grande importanza, tutte le [altre] chiese, ovvero i fedeli, da dovunque vengano, concordino con la Chiesa di Roma, nella quale cio' che deriva dalla tradizione apostolica e' sempre preservato dai fedeli, da qualsiasi parte essi siano giunti.

To me, key points in interpreting this sentence (assuming it correctly renders the original Greek, that is) seem to be:

• the context: Irenaeus is giving here an example of his apostolic succession argument; his argument is not logically based on the Church of Rome. The enim at the beginning of the sentence links this example with the argument.
  
• the use of a comparative and not of a superlative when describing the Church of Rome
  
• the interpretation of necesse est. One could read it as "it has to be", "it is necessary", but in the sense that, given the logical argument explained at paragraph III.3.1 (the true doctrine imparted from the Apostles to their successors), it is not consistent that a given church, that is, a given believer, does not agree with what is believed in Rome, which is a most important Church, having being founded by Peter and Paul (Irenaeus says), and that therefore certainly testifies to the true faith. I would not read necesse est in the sense of "all other churches have to look at Rome as the only deposit of the true faith". In other words, necesse est is a consequence of the logical argument (of apostolic succession), which finds a concrete example in the Church of Rome (a second example will be given by Irenaeus when talking about Polycarp).
  

For the second point, Polycarp is an example of a bishop who inherited the true faith, "having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true", and this is testified by "all the Asiatic Churches". There is no reference here to a "supremacy" of the Church of Rome; this suggests to me that the interpretation I gave above is correct.

Now, Hall is obviously right in saying that there were Christians in Rome before Peter and Paul arrived there. But this does not alter Irenaeus' logical argument: he assumes that true faith is handed down by bishops, and bishops derive via succession from the apostles; whether there were Christians or not in Rome before Peter (assuming e.g. that Peter was the first bishop of Rome) is not relevant for the argument, since Peter himself is an Apostle: what counts is that the bishops after Peter can be traced back to Peter. And this is what Irenaeus wants to do. Now, for the actual list he gives, it is not possible to verify it before Sixtus, and some names are unknown altogether (on the other hand, why the names Linus, Anacletus and Clement are in the list can be easily understood).

For what regards the effectiveness of Irenaeus' argument, I have already noted some responses from the Gnostics. I think that an excellent example is the Gospel of Mary, where the apostles are clearly at a loss about what to do, while Mary Magdalene has had extra revelations from Jesus and is able to impart instructions to the apostles themselves. More generally, a gnostic response to Irenaeus can be seen to take several forms: firstly, not all mysteries were revealed to the apostles (but somebody else received them and passed them on to selected people). Or there are mysteries that were revealed by some apostles to some people, who did not become bishops, but rather gnostic teachers. In this second category falls for example Valentinus, who was a disciple of Theudas, who was a disciple of Paul. Or Basilides, who was a disciple of Glaucus, who was a disciple of Peter. So, in this second case, we just see that the same argument of legitimization of authority through apostolic succession is adopted by both orthodox and etherodox churches. Finally, there is the case of traditions that, according to gnostic thought, can be traced back to the apostles (hence they are authoritative), but that are not recognized by orthodox bishops (the case for example of the Apocryphon of John.) Important: this last point suggests the key role of an accepted canon of scriptures.

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Categories: Church_History