The Apostolic Church
The apostolic Church. Where does this particular word come from? The word itself cannot be found in the texts of the Bible, but what we mean by it certainly comes from the very person of Jesus, from His words and deeds and, of course, from the teachings and the actions of His Apostles. Already in the first decades of the life of the early Christian communities, people started using this word to speak about the Church and its members. For the very first time, we also find the word ‘apostolic’ referring to the Church in a letter written by Saint Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria, to the Trallians while he was on his way to Rome where he suffered martyrdom, killed by the beasts, probably in the Coloseum in the year 107. The second time we find this word is in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. Here, Polycarp himself is called ‘apostolic.’ He was the bishop of Smyrna until around the year 155. (Smyrna is today called Izmir, a city on the west coast of Turkey.) The most important reference to this term is in our Creed which was decisively shaped in the Council of Nicea (325) though, at that time, the text ended with the words.. “and (we believe) in the Holy Spirit.” The part that we continue to recite today: “… the Lord, the Giver of Life, and in the one….. apostolic Church…” was officially included there by the Council of Constantinople in the year 381, though the council fathers probably took the words from an earlier document written around 374 by Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis on the island of Cyprus. ‘Apostolic’ in the New Testament The word is not there, but those who began to use it certainly did so to say that both what we believe in, as Christians, and also much in our way of living, as a Church, certainly come from Jesus and His Apostles. We could say that the first ‘apostolic person’ in the New Testament is Jesus Himself. The word comes from the Greek verb apostellein which means to send. We remember, at once, that Jesus used the words of Prophet Isaiah to introduce Himself to His contemporaries in the synagogue of Nazareth – precisely as the One who has been anointed by the Spirit of God and sent (Lk. 4:18). The idea that He was sent by the Father is clearly seen as the main motivation behind everything that Jesus said and did. No wonder that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews will call Jesus ‘Apostle and High Priest of the faith that we profess’ (Heb. 3:1). But Jesus is not the only one sent. From the very beginning of His mission, He extended to His disciples this fundamental dynamics of His own intimate life: “As the Father sent me, so I’m sending you” (Jn. 20:21). After His death, His every appearance to His disciples ends with words or gestures that send them (e.g. Jn. 20:17–18). And His
