Bishops and Apostles

[mossrose]

As far as I recall, they're mostly all just referred to as "apostles". The Orthodox Church distinguishes between the twelve (+Paul) and the seventy (see Luke 10); all the others referenced as apostles are considered to fall in the latter group. Regardless, they were all from the New Testament era.

I gave passages, I think, in a previous post.

[NorrinRadd]

Well, even conceding they were apostles, my initial argument against present day apostles is that new apostles were elected by the existing original apostles who were chosen by Christ, like when they chose Matthias to replace Judas in Acts 1. And there are no original apostles now to choose any new ones.

I'm pondering Mossie's view w.r.t. "Apostles of Christ" and "apostles of churches," which Witherington seems to support. In that case, I guess Paul would be an "Apostle of Christ" in some contexts, and "apostle of the church of ______" in others (e.g. the church of Antioch, alongside Barnabas). So in that case, any church could commission "apostles"; but today, we might choose a different term (emissary, missionary, etc.). I have mixed views on doing that. It would avoid some of the "baggage" of the term "apostle," but it departs from Biblical terminology.