What role do the Apostles have?

[JakeEW]

What tole do the Apostles have now and in the New Creation? Upon reflecting on the relevant Scriptures and the Gospel narrative as a whole, it seems that it is less than Rome says, but more than what the modern American church says.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Rome considers herself an ongoing Incarnation, with a body and (of course...) a head. It is also the ongoing apostolate with equal authority to them. This explains how she can (as we in the Protestant world see it) defy the apostles in the written word, because they cannot "rule" or overrule the current mind of the church, which has the exact same inspiration as the original Apostles. God, speaking through the church, has merely adjusted his intent for a new era. Could churchmen, yea the apostles themselves marry at the beginning of the NT age? Sure, but now the church says differently. No appeal to the original apostles via the Scriptures can budge Rome, which does not recognize in THEM an authority beyond herself.

We, on the other hand, who see the falsehood of the Roman stance, also object to the ethos (present indeed in the Amercan church) that refuses to be bound by the apostles in their written, inspired words. These men still rule us, not as it were from the grave, but from heaven.

 

[JakeEW]

Thanks, I had not thought about the Roman Church actually usurping the Apostles. Very interesting.