The Magisterial Protestant

Apostolic succession, is the doctrine that for a church to be considered a true church, that is, one with true and saving sacraments. The sacraments need to be administered by a pastor who has been ordained by a bishop that can trace his ordination back to someone ordained by the Apostles. Essentially apostles like Paul, ordained bishops like Timothy and eventually Timothy ordained other men and those men ordained other men and so on and so forth. This forms an unbroken and physical line of laying on of hands. The present day Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Assyrian, Oriental and Anglican churches all claim that they can list the ordinations of their bishops back to one of the original Apostles ordained by Jesus Christ our Lord. I will be presenting the case that Lutherans, the Reformed and other protestants have a type of presbyteral succession which should also be seen as valid. Should you even care? Lets quickly read what some of the early church fathers thought:  Saint Clement, bisho...

She is the world's oldest and most enduring institution. She has been alive for 2000 years. She is home to 1.378 billion people and makes up 50% of all Christians and by far the largest denomination of Christianity. She is the Roman Catholic church. You will recall if you have read my article on ecumenism that initially there was only one Christian church after the death of the apostles. This church was called the "Catholic church" which simply means the universal church, to be clear I want to distinguish between the Roman Catholic church from simply the Catholic church. When i refer to the Catholic church i will be referring to the original first Christian church founded by the apostles before any schisms (splits) and Rome to refer to the Roman Catholic church led by the Pope in Vatican city whose church (along with 3 others) has been on earth since the time of Christ. Peter and the Papacy The Papacy is the foundation of Roman Catholicism and what distinguishes them from...