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ABSTRACT: The Roman Catholic Church claims theological authority because, so it says, its bishops are the successors of the apostles. Critical to this pretense is the notion of the episcopate as a closed circle: a person can only become a bishop by being made such by an apostle or by another bishop. This means that every bishop should in principle be able to trace his consecration back by means of other bishops to an apostle. In this video, I will argue that this notion of apostolic succession is nowhere to be found in the earliest sources and is sooner a later invention. The evidence actually suggests that no present-day bishops could ever trace their consecration back by means of other bishops to an apostle, and thus that they do not enjoy apostolic succession of the sort they imagine.
Dr. Steven Nemes has a BA in Philosophy from Arizona State University with a minor in Religious Studies (2013), and an MDiv and PhD in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary (2016, 2021). The author of a number of articles, chapters, and books on diverse subjects in theology and philosophy, he teaches Latin at North Phoenix Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, Arizona.