"The Church Has Authority Through Apostolic Succession to Change God's Commands"

The argument is one of the most powerful in the Catholic and Orthodox arsenal, because it doesn't depend on any single proof-text holding up. Even if Matthew 16 is contested, the claim goes, Christ plainly gave His apostles authority, and an unbroken line of ordination carries that authority forward. The Church can therefore define doctrine and adjust practice — including moving the Sabbath to Sunday — with Christ's own authority behind it. To resist is to resist Him.

It deserves a real answer. And the answer is not "succession is unbiblical." It is that Scripture's own successions work in exactly the opposite way the objection needs.

What Makes It Serious

This is not a power grab dressed up as theology. It answers a genuine problem. Someone in history did have to discern which books are Scripture, define the Trinity against real heresies, and settle disputed questions — and Scripture does not interpret itself in a vacuum. Christ did promise the gates of hell would not prevail (Matthew 16:18) and that the Spirit would guide His people into truth (John 16:13). The Tanakh itself establishes ordained offices and even ordination by the laying on of hands (Numbers 27:18-23). A continuity reading cannot pretend succession is foreign to the Bible. It isn't.

The question is not whether God established successions, but what authority they actually carry.

The Response

Distinguish the two claims. "Apostolic succession" bundles transmission (authority passes down an unbroken chain) with alteration (that authority can modify binding practice). The first is modest and has biblical analogues. The second is the load-bearing claim — and the Torah denies it to every office it ever established. The whole argument depends on using the chain to license a power no chain in Scripture ever carried.

Every office sits under the word. Israel's king — the highest office — must personally copy the Torah and "read in it all the days of his life... that he may not turn aside from the commandment" (Deuteronomy 17:18-20). The priest is its custodian and "messenger" (Malachi 2:7). And the fence admits no exceptions: "You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it" (Deuteronomy 4:2). If no king or priest may add or subtract, no bishop may either. Even "binding and loosing" (Matthew 16:19) meant, in first-century Jewish usage, interpreting how Torah applies — not repealing commands; and the identical authority is given to all the disciples in Matthew 18:18.

The decisive evidence: a valid chain whose legitimacy God revoked. The Aaronic priesthood is the strongest succession in Scripture — hereditary, divinely-instituted, sealed as a "perpetual priesthood" (Numbers 25:13). Yet twice God strips its legitimacy while the bloodline stays flawless:

"I will send the curse upon you... You have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi." (Malachi 2:1-8, ESV)

And to Eli's "perpetual" line: "Far be it from me... I will raise up for myself a faithful priest" (1 Samuel 2:30-35). Unbroken succession, revoked legitimacy — for unfaithfulness, not for any break in the chain. This is the exact reverse of the objection's logic. Apostolic succession says, the chain is unbroken, therefore the teaching is valid. Malachi says, the chain is unbroken, and the office is cursed anyway, because it corrupted the instruction it was meant to guard. The chain was never what conferred legitimacy. Fidelity was. (By the first century, Annas and Caiaphas held unquestioned succession — and used it to condemn the Messiah.)

God bypasses the chain at will. Amos the herdsman ("I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son," Amos 7:14); Eldad and Medad receiving the Spirit outside the ordination tent (Numbers 11:26-29); even Cyrus, a pagan king, called God's "anointed" (Isaiah 45:1). The Spirit is not the property of an ordination lineage.

Every authority is tested by an outside standard. A miracle-working prophet who teaches against the commandments is rejected (Deuteronomy 13:1-5); "to the Torah and to the testimony" (Isaiah 8:20); "even if we or an angel from heaven" preach contrary, "let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8). An apostle places himself under the message. A self-validating chain has no such test.

The apostolic office is, by design, unrepeatable. Replacing Judas required a resurrection eyewitness (Acts 1:21-22); Paul is "last of all" to see the risen Messiah (1 Corinthians 15:8); the church is built on a foundation laid once (Ephesians 2:20). The favorite succession text, 2 Timothy 2:2, entrusts "what you have heard" to "faithful men, who will be able to teach others" — succession of fidelity to a fixed deposit, not power to change it. The same deposit-guarding shows in the Jerusalem Council, where James settles the question by Scripture, not by decree (Acts 15:15).

So the genuine thing the objection points to — that the Spirit preserves the church and that the canon was recognized through the church — is fully accounted for by guarding the deposit (Jude 3, "the faith once for all delivered") and recognizing Scripture's authority (the Bereans test even Paul against the text, Acts 17:11). What it cannot license is the move from preserving the deposit to altering it — which is exactly what the Sabbath-to-Sunday change requires, and what Catholic sources defend not from Scripture but as a demonstration of the Church's own authority.

What Remains Uncertain

The readings of Matthew 16:18 ("gates of hell") and John 16:13 ("into all truth") are genuinely debated between traditions, and a robust case can be made that the Spirit's guidance of the church is real. This response does not deny that guidance — it argues that guidance preserves fidelity to the deposit rather than conferring power to revise it. Note too that the Eastern Orthodox half of historic succession rejects papal supremacy outright, which already shows "succession" does not entail Rome's conclusions.

Confidence level: [Established] that Torah places every office under the word and tests every authority by an external standard (Deut 4:2; 17:18-20; Deut 13; Isa 8:20; Gal 1:8). [Probable to Established] that this refutes the alteration form of apostolic succession, once transmission and alteration are distinguished. [Disputed] on the contested proof-texts (Matt 16:18; John 16:13) — which is why the argument rests on the structure of Torah's successions instead.

For the full treatment, see Apostolic Succession and the Power to Change God's Law.