It is by Fr. John Behr, dean and professor of patristics at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. :
As an example, Irenaeus pointed to the Christian communities in Rome (at that time there were many house churches, each with its own leaders, not one church with a single bishop), and in particular the community led by Eleutherius. He listed 12 successive leaders, from the apostles down to Eleutherius, to show that the apostolic teaching had been passed on continuously. He especially noted Clement, one of the first leaders, who had known the apostles and recorded their teaching in a letter that was earlier than any of the Gnostics’ texts. “By this succession,” Irenaeus wrote, “the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is the most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth.”
In later centuries, some churches began trying to construct similar lists of succession to defend their own authenticity or authttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhority, but this was not Irenaeus’s main concern. He was not defending the authority of particular people; he was trying to defend the true faith against heresy by showing that the apostles’ message about Jesus had been faithfully preserved in the churches, and therefore could be trusted. Succession for him did not primarily mean handing down an office; it was the public expression of the continuity of the true faith.
The article can be found here.
HT: Reformed Catholicism
