Please read back in the thread; the issue was about apostolic succession. Unless your position is that each bishop must be commissioned by the Apostles (or their direct line-of-decent successors)?
***Did I say Apostle? No. I said bishop. There was a bishop at Antioch, as there were in all the NT churches.
Please read back in the thread; the issue was about apostolic succession. Unless your position is that each bishop must be commissioned by the Apostles (or their direct line-of-decent successors)?***
That is precisely the position of the Church. The episcopate is the collective body of all bishops of a church. In the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Rite Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Old-Catholic,Moravian Church, and Independent Catholic churches as well as in the Assyrian Church of the East, it is held that only a person in Apostolic Succession, a line of succession of bishops dating back to the Apostles, can be a bishop, and only such a person can validly ordain Christian clergy. The succession must be transmitted from each bishop to a successor by the rite of Holy Orders. Bishops in valid Apostolic Succession compose the historical episcopate.
Paul had to be validly ordained by a bishop in the Apostolic Succession.